A photographic exploration by Anna Szkoda of the collections at the Museum of Photography, the State Library on Unter den Linden, the State Institute for Music Research, the Secret State Archives of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the Art Library and the Ibero-American Institute
Like a never-ending labyrinth, the individual paths wind their way through canyons of books, stairwells, basements and narrow corridors. They all reveal the same thing: a world full of secrets, full of the legacies of a bygone era. Diaries, letters, drawings, photographs, films – and sometimes even a lock of hair or a dried wildflower.
The five institutions of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation are the first port of call when it comes to the estates of famous personalities – from the pianist Clara Schumann to the controversial director and photographer Leni Riefenstahl, from the conductor Hans von Bülow to the furniture designer Erich Dieckmann, from the geographer Hans Steffen to the composer Franz Kullak. Meticulously catalogued and impeccably preserved, sometimes even digitally recorded, these lives lie waiting in boxes for researchers who can decipher the notes, sentences, symbols, signs and codes. And time and again the question arises, one that also shaped the previous interview with Emil Nolde: what responsibility falls upon those who handle these legacies? And can these objects truly be used to trace a life that unfolded in precisely this way and no other? Does the testator even determine the perspective on an artistic biography? How does one deal with secrets that have been revealed?
