BERLIN.- The experiences of children in flight from their homelands and living in exile are the focus of an extensive programme organised by the Akademie der Künste under the title Kinder im Exil (Children in Exile). A documentary exhibition, related special events, and school workshops link the present with exile experiences of the past, traces of which can be found among the many estates in the extensive archives of the Akademie der Künste. The exhibition opened on 16 June, led by Aydan Özoğuz, Minister of State and the Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration, Jeanine Meerapfel, President of the Akademie der Künste, and Edzard Reuter.

In its historical section, the exhibition shows facsimiles of photographs, letters and working manuscripts from the archives at the Akademie der Künste, in particular from the estates of artists who had to go into exile with their children between 1933 and 1945. Rarely acknowledged or previously taken into account, the perspectives of children who fled with their parents are now brought to light, including the sons and daughters of Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel, George Grosz, Anna Seghers, and others. The exhibition’s present-day section is dedicated to ART WORLDS projects by artists and children about exile. Berlin school groups, also made up of welcoming classes, have utilised the archives at the Akademie der Künste since September 2015, delving into the estates and documents of Ellen Auerbach, Alfred Döblin, Heinrich Mann, Bruno Taut, et al. They have been inspired to produce films, models, texts, photographs, drawings, musical compositions, theatre productions and a crime story as a result, which even today show emigration from both sides of the coin – as a challenge, but also as an enrichment.

Talks, readings, presentations and workshops for children augment the exhibition. A broad programme of guided tours convey the exhibition’s subject matter to both children and adults.

On the first three days of the exhibition, from 16 – 18 June, documentary films about those who’ve had to flee and go into exile are shown in cooperation with the Jewish Filmfestival Berlin & Brandenburg. The films, made between 2000 and the present, thwart expected viewpoints, allow the past to be reconsidered and make the realities they show seem alarmingly close. The films tell of a “street of migrants” in Tel Aviv, Palestinian refugees from Iraq in exile in Chile, a ship carrying Jewish refugees from Romania and the Kindertransport to Great Britain in 1938/39.