Dear Sir or Madam,
Dear friends,

The House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site is revamping its Newsletter. In the first issue in the new format, we look back on the creation and conception of our permanent exhibition, which opened in January 2020.

Three topics continuously accompanied the “New Permanent Exhibition” project and were intensively discussed in the past few years:

  • educational and curatorial standards,
  • inclusion and accessibility,
  • and language.

This Newsletter is intended to provide a glimpse behind the scenes, make our considerations transparent, and encourage further discussion and exchange.

The curators Babette Quinkert and Katharina Zeiher have written about educational and curatorial standards, along with Dr Elke Gryglewski (management team for the New Permanent Exhibition), who summarises her article as follows: “In many cases, different spheres of experience and objectives clashed from a curatorial and educational point of view, and the resulting controversies over content have been the subject of attention of many colleagues in the German and international memorial landscape. Presenting them here is intended to contribute to ongoing discussions.”

A group of “experts in their own cause”, who worked right from the beginning on the content and design of the new exhibition with a “Design for All” approach, will talk about inclusion and accessibility. In total, ten members of associations for people with disabilities participated as representatives for the aspects seeing, hearing, moving, understanding and feeling.

We wish you an interesting read!

Deborah Hartmann (Director), Eike Stegen (Press and Public Relations), Franziska Thole (Trainee Research Assistant), David Zolldan (Curator for Outreach and Management Team New Permanent Exhibition)