Out of the Box – 75 Years of the Archives of the Akademie der Künste
Caught between order and chaos, forgetting and remembering, the analogue and digital worlds, the Archives of the Akademie der Künste are confronted with immense challenges. The Archives create a living, open space of dialogue between art and science and collaboration across art forms.
To mark its 75th anniversary, an exhibition shares 75 stories – about memory work, the genesis of artistic works, the structure and organisation of cultural knowledge, and questions of transmission and missing items. In an age of “alternative facts” and artificial intelligence, the archives remain a beacon of reliable information and authentic sources. At the same time, they embrace new forms of artistic expression, media, storage and communication.
Iconic testimonies such as Walter Benjamin’s essay What is Aura?, love letters by Anna Seghers, Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, John Heartfield’s collages, Käthe Kollwitz’s diary or Mary Wigman’s dance notations speak of the aura of objects and the powerful role archives play in shaping the canon of memory work for generations to come.
Artistic positions
Ingo Gerken / Echo Ho / Dominique Hurth / Marcel Odenbach
Featured in the exhibition
Alvar Aalto / Mario Adorf / Ellen Auerbach / Horst Bartnig / Vicki Baum / Paul Baumgarten / Johannes R. Becher / Walter Benjamin / David Bennent / Carl Blechen / Gerhard Bohner / Bertolt Brecht / Micha Brendel / Ernst Busch / Herbert Freiherr von Buttlar / Jurriaan Cootwijk / Nelly Dix / Otto Dix / Wils Ebert / Elke Erb / Eberhard Fechner / Lyonel Feininger / Franz Fühmann / Hartmut Geerken / Ingo Gerken / Jochen Gerz / Friedrich Gilly / Günter Grass / George Grosz / John Heartfield / Suzette Henry / Wulf Herzogenrath / Birger Heymann / Alfred Hirschmeier / Echo Ho / Rolf Hochhuth / Walter Huder / Dominique Hurth / Walter Jens / Volker Kahl / Georg Kaiser / Alfred Kantorowicz / Walter Kempowski / Imre Kertész / Irmgard Keun / Barbara Köhler / Carl Wilhelm Kolbe d.Ä. / Uwe Kolbe / Käthe Kollwitz / Carl Kretschmar / Christina Kubisch / Dieter Ladewig / Alice Lex-Nerlinger / Peter Lilienthal / Franz Lippisch / Volker Ludwig / Heinrich Mann / Eva Maria Marcus / Penny McCarthy / Ludwig Meidner / Leopoldo Méndez / Marlene Moeschke-Poelzig / Heiner Müller / Wiebke Müller / Péter Nádas / Nam June Paik / Erna Pinner / Marcel Odenbach / Emine Sevgi Özdamar / Edgar Reitz / Paul und Eslanda Robeson / Thomas Rosenlöcher / Johann Gottfried Schadow / Hans Scharoun / Hermann Scherchen / Max Schirner / Jörg Schlaich / Einar Schleef / Christine Schlegel / Oskar Schlemmer / Silvia und Dieter Schlenstedt / Christoph Schlingensief / Volker Schlöndorff / Andreas Schlüter / Rolf Dietrich Schmidt / Anna Seghers / Gerd Sonntag / Klaus Staeck / Maria Steinfeldt / Katharina Thalbach / Wolfgang Trautwein / Gudrun Trendafilov / Herbert Tucholski / Gisela Tuchtenhagen / Maxie Wander / Helene Weigel / Günther Weisenborn / Peter Weiss / Rudolf Weißer / Trak Wendisch / Charles White / Mary Wigman / Roger Willemsen / Christa Wolf / Konrad Wolf / Karla Woisnitza / Peter Zadek / Leopold Zielke / Bernd Alois Zimmermann / Arnold Zweig
Media partners
Netty Reiling (= Anna Seghers, 1900–1983), letters to her future husband László Radványi
Klaus Staeck (b. 1937), Nichts ist erledigt, c. 2010
The Abstract Dancer from Oskar Schlemmer’s (1922) Triadic Ballet in the reconstruction by Gerhard Bohner (1977). Costumes: Ulrike Dietrich. Performance in June 2025 at the Prinzregententheater in Munich.
Heinrich Mann’s (1871–1950) American estate arriving in Prague, 1956
Günter Grass (1927–2015), jacket design for his novel The Tin Drum, 1959