Publications

Publications on various topics as author, editor and in collaboration have appeared in bookshops.

The Jewish Katz/Gutmann family from Hesse was able to escape Nazi Germany in the fall of 1936 after having to sell their company, house and gardens for less than they were worth in order to finance the journey and a small household for a new start. In Haifa/British Mandate Palestine, the family lived in the children’s home for German refugee children, which the youngest daughter Claire had founded in 1932.

After 1945, attempts to make amends for the injustices committed began in Germany. Perpetrators were to be punished, victims – as far as possible – compensated. Original letters from the post-war period between Israel and Germany from October 1946 to December 1949, which surfaced in Haifa/Israel in 2018, show just how difficult denazification and restitution were.

Hentrich & Hentrich – The publishing house for Jewish culture and contemporary history

Margarete Junge (1874-1966) is one of the unjustly forgotten artists of the period between Art Nouveau and Bauhaus. The designer mainly created furniture, but also lamps, jewelry and clothing. With her work for the Deutschen Werkstätten für Handwerkskunst in Hellerau, she left a lasting mark on the history of arts and crafts. In 1907, Margarete Junge was the first woman to be appointed as a teacher at the Königlich Sächsische Kunstgewerbeschule (later as a professor) and was also one of the first female members of the Deutscher Werkbund. Her students included Fritz Tröger, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler and the later entrepreneurs Grete Wendt and Grete Kühn. Margarete Junge was prematurely dismissed from her post by the National Socialists in 1934.
This volume sheds light on the various facets of the artistic work and personality of this unusual woman.

http://verlag.sandstein.de/­product_info.php?products_id=578

Reunification in church music – how a Brandenburg congregation sang together.
2010

Through the medium of church music, but also with secular pieces by Brecht and Weill, for example, people have sung together in high musical quality over the last twenty years.

A new era of church music began in Kleinmachnow in 1990. In the difficult years following the end of the post-war order, Karsten and Katharina Seibt worked with all the forces at their disposal to achieve a genuine reunification of Germans and Germans. In the summer of 2010, the cantor couple will have been in Kleinmachnow for 20 years and it is impossible to imagine life without them.
This book provides a unique chronicle of church music in Kleinmachnow with annual reviews, pictures of performances and the wonderful woodcuts and etchings by graphic artist Rainer Ehrt, who has designed the posters for the church music since 1995.

“Willkommen im Club?” tells the story of the Club of Berlin since its foundation in 1864. The author describes its development into one of the most important meeting places for the business and financial elite, the changes under National Socialist policies and the exclusion of Jewish members, which was followed by the merger with the conservative Deutschen Herrenklub. In a further section, biographies are dedicated to some of these members with great empathy, shedding light on the different fates of those persecuted. A reprint of the 1926 chronicle of Max J. Wolff, one of those who were no longer allowed to be members from 1938 and committed suicide before being deported, is also included.

Shortly after reunification, the author travels for the first time to her father’s hometown, which she calls Guttau in the book, near the Polish border, to visit her ancestors’ former cloth factory. She hears that her grandfather was a staunch Nazi. Why was this topic omitted at home? Why was her grandfather considered a saint? Until now, only “the others” were the perpetrators and her own family were “virtually in the resistance”. Her father, not yet of age at the end of the war but already a soldier, whom she confronts, denies everything and finally refuses to talk about it altogether. However, research on the internet and in archives reveals information that is painful for her. Once again, she seeks a dialog with her father. Through the painstakingly intensive exchange about the murderous 12 years of National Socialism, a new relationship of trust develops between the two. A typical German story that shows how difficult it still is today to come to terms with the German past within one’s own family.

When the Wall came down and the state of Brandenburg re-established itself as an independent federal state, it was able to build on an old tradition. It became a land of immigration again. Changes set things in motion. Changes and new additions called into question: Who am I? Or, in the words of Immanuel Kant, the question was posed in a broader context: What is man? The UNESCO project group “Vom Fremdsein und Anderswo – SchreiberInnen zwischen den Kulturen” at GEDOK Brandenburg, which includes writers from different linguistic homelands, also asked itself these exciting and fascinating questions….
Barbara Wiesener