chezweitz museal and urban scenography

Eine Stadt macht mit

Eine Stadt macht mit

Frankfurt und der NS

Historisches Museum Frankfurt

Frank­furt am Main – this inter­na­tion­al­ly con­nect­ed, mod­ern, and col­or­ful metrop­o­lis, a Euro­pean trad­ing hub and home to impor­tant cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions, is vis­it­ed and admired for its open­ness and tol­er­ance. It’s hard to imag­ine that 76 years ago, the city with its glit­ter­ing sky­line was an impor­tant part of anoth­er net­work, cre­at­ed by Nation­al Social­ism and its sup­port­ers in Europe, a net­work of ter­ror and oppres­sion that caused suf­fer­ing to many peo­ple. Thus, Frank­furt also played a spe­cial and impor­tant role in the Nazi régime’s pol­i­cy of exclu­sion and anni­hi­la­tion.
Embrac­ing this sig­nif­i­cance, the His­tor­i­cal Muse­um in Frank­furt (HMF) embarked on a unique exhi­bi­tion exper­i­ment –​in ​“Frank­furt and the Nazis,” the Nation­al Social­ist past and the asso­ci­at­ed sites were made vis­i­ble in their entire­ty for the first time for present-day generations.

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The largest of the three par­al­lel exhi­bi­tions in the HMF’s spe­cial exhi­bi­tion space was designed by chezweitz in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the cura­to­r­i­al team led by Jen­ny Jung. The result is a sceno­graph­ic walk through Frank­furt before, dur­ing, and after the Nazi era. A total of 19 sta­tions of typ­i­cal urban life — the town hall, shops, the old town, the muse­um, the police sta­tion, etc. — form a detec­tive-like, spa­tial, and cura­to­r­i­al nar­ra­tive, for which our team of design­ers con­ceived indi­vid­ual sec­tions. They tell of the loca­tions of the per­pe­tra­tors and their victims.

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Mon­u­men­tal wall pan­els serve as the basis for these loca­tions. Their col­or, the light, wood­en brown, and their typ­i­cal mate­ri­al­i­ty are not only a rem­i­nis­cence of the exhi­bi­tion space. Their wood­en appear­ance makes the cen­tral main stair­case dis­ap­pear among the for­est of pan­els. It is also an allu­sion to the Nazis’ pref­er­ence for ​“Ger­man” build­ing mate­ri­als such as oak or nat­ur­al stone.

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The sto­ic char­ac­ter of the cubes is bro­ken by white, red, and reflec­tive col­ored sur­faces on the wall ele­ments – they reflect the exhi­bi­tion texts, dis­cuss con­tem­po­rary resis­tance and attempts at protest by coura­geous Frank­furt cit­i­zens (trace of resis­tance), and pose ques­tions about the present, thus serv­ing as rays of hope and refrac­tion in the light-brown-dom­i­nat­ed exhi­bi­tion land­scape. Fol­low­ing on from this, twelve ini­tia­tives sus­pend­ed from the ceil­ing tell of cur­rent attempts at remem­brance in Frank­furt (e.g., the Stolper­steine). Their pow­er­ful col­ors cre­ate a con­nec­tion to the trail of resistance.

Pho­tographs of the sites before and after the Nazi era on the ends of the walls allow vis­i­tors to wan­der auto­mat­i­cal­ly and intu­itive­ly from one sta­tion to the next.

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To deprive them of their aura and break their Nazi sym­bol­ism, the 800 exhibits were staged as far as pos­si­ble to detract from their orig­i­nal func­tion: a police uni­form lies fold­ed in a dis­play case, a bust of Hitler is dis­played with­out a base on a shelf.

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In the stair­well, the spaces are also tak­en very seri­ous­ly, and exist­ing objects are effort­less­ly inte­grat­ed into the exhi­bi­tion expe­ri­ence. White fab­ric pan­els stretched across the walls of the stairs serve as a chrono­log­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion and a screen for con­tem­po­rary film footage.