Iliane Thiemann: “Erase the Traces! or Murder in the Elevator Shaft: Detective Work in the Archives of the Academy of Arts, Berlin”

In collaboration with the Center for German and European Studies at the University of Minnesota.

THIS LECTURE WILL BE IN GERMAN.

This event will be virtual (via Zoom). Registration is required for the Zoom link, available soon. 

With over 1,200 artists’ bequests, the archives of the Academy of Arts are one of the most significant collections of 20th-century German art and culture. The extensive holdings of artists and institutions in the Bertolt Brecht Archive enjoy a special position within it, housed in the very building where Brecht spent the last three years of his life working and living, close to his theater, the Berliner Ensemble, and near his gravesite at the Dorotheenstädtischer Cemetery. The history of the archive reflects the tense relationship between the East German government and the poet, revealing the state’s attempt to assert control over the interpretation of Brecht’s work.

What makes the archives of the Academy of Arts particularly fascinating and useful for research on Brecht are also the bequests of many of Brecht’s close friends and collaborators, all gathered in one place, such as those of Helene Weigel, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Ernst Busch, or Brecht’s close collaborator Elisabeth Hauptmann. The archive of the philosopher Walter Benjamin, who had been friends with Brecht since the late 1920s in Berlin and continued to meet him during their exile to develop ideas and plans together, is also included. The archives allow for a deeper understanding of the work and life contexts of both writers, sometimes revealing still undetected traces, such as their collaboration on a crime novel project: a hot lead of criminal energy that will be pursued during the event based, based on the graphic novel by author and graphic artist Steffen Thiemann.

Iliane Thiemann studied modern German literature, Germanic linguistics, and information science at the Humboldt University Berlin. She has been a member of the archival staff at the Academy of Arts in Berlin since 2002, first in the section of Performing Arts, and since 2011 in the Bertolt Brecht Archive. Her most recent publication:  Fragments by the Metre: A Fragmentary Stroll Through the Bertolt Brecht Archive. (translated by Kathrin Luddecke) In: brecht fragments. Raven Row, London, 2024 (see the catalog of the exhibition).

Steffen Thiemann is a writer, graphic artist, and performer who writes radio plays, libretti, short prose, and poems. He is a free-lance associate of the Academy of Arts in Berlin where he organizes tours of the Brecht-Weigel Museum and the Anna Seghers Museum. Recent publications on Brecht include the graphic novel Mord im Fahrstuhlschacht (2017) as well as two pleated artist’s books called In den Neunziger Jahren des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (2023) and Gedenktafel für 12 Weltmeister (2024).