July 5, 2023 – January 7, 2024
Munich Displaced. After 1945 and without a Homeland
Munich occupies a very important place in the history of the people of Eastern Europe in the post-war period after the Second World War. "Munich Displaced", the latest exhibition mounted by the Münchner Stadtmuseum, will cast a spotlight on what has proved to be a highly heterogeneous group of displaced persons (DPs). Munich’s Jewish Museum will concurrently run a special exhibition, focusing specifically on Jewish DPs.

Until now, there has been little in-depth research into the history of DPs – former forced laborers, political prisoners who had been held in concentration camps, collaborators, and others. We, at the Münchner Stadtmuseum, have taken a new slant on this nationwide gap in Germany’s cultural memory and have approached it from the perspective of local history. The exhibition has two main themes: education, and the "Lagerschulen" (camp schools), and various other educational institutions, such as the Tolstoy Library and the Ukrainian Free University, that were founded by migrants as an expression of their desire to shape their own fate,and exactly how those who remained in Munich under the new legal status of "stateless persons" managed to settle in the new district of Ludwigsfeld. Both themes are deeply embedded in our current research into the topography of Munich, that focuses on 40 locations associated with non-Jewish DPs and seeks to highlight current gaps in our cultural memory. We would like to invite our visitors to contribute their own knowledge to help us build our collection.

Our latest two "Munich Displaced" special exhibitions, following on from "Radio Free Europe. Voices from Munich during the Cold War", mark the next stage in our joint research and collection project entitled "The Post-War Period and Migration in Munich".

October 10, 2023 – January 7, 2024
FORUM 056: Maude Grübel. Jardin d’essai
"Jardin d’essai" is a series of photos taken by Maude Grübel (*1980 in Munich) in Algiers between 2009 and 2014. The title is a reference to a botanical garden created in the Hamma district in 1832, during French colonization. The Franco-German photographer first visited the Algerian capital with a friend who was returning to his homeland after a ten-year absence. What had once been a familiar environment now felt alien to him and he was forced to face the idea that he no longer belonged in this city.

This feeling of alienation forms the thread running through Maude Grübel’s photographic exploration of Algiers which she treats as “unknown territory”. She combines empty streets and squares, parks, and landscapes with uncompromisingly poignant portraits to create an atmospheric snapshot of a city where time has stood still. Her photographs tread a fine line between documentary objectivity and poetic imagery. She explores the surfaces and structures of whitewashed façades, burnt woodlands and urban details in often fragmentary compositions, treating the relationship between subjective memory and collective history much like an archeology of the present day.
This gallery exhibition was made possible with the generous support of the Institut Français.