Opening: Thursday, October 17, 2024, 7 pm
Duration: October 18, 2024 – April 28, 2025
“This is who I am, this is who I am in my whole body, this is who I am, and this is how I will stay. Yes, sir!” (Zarah Leander)
The biographical estate of Eberhardt Brucks (1917-2008), which is kept at the Schwules Museum, gives us a remarkable insight into the life of a gay man who was particularly characterized by resilience: the ability to overcome difficult situations or crises and emerge stronger. In Nazi-Berlin, under the persecution of Paragraph 175 and in the post-war period, Eberhardt repeatedly found loopholes to live out his gay identity and sexuality. Eberhardt’s strategies of resilience included playful approaches and protected him from the systems, made him capable of acting, enabled him to have partnerships, physical self-empowerment and spaces of joy. This new perspective on a not-so-ordinary gay life in the 20th century is extended into a queer present in this exhibition: four positions by contemporary artists tie in with the resilient aspects of Eberhardt Bruck’s life.
Curated by neo seefried
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Eberhardt Brucks was born in Berlin-Lichtenrade in 1917 and trained at the Berlin Textile and Fashion School from 1936 to 1938, where he studied costume and stage design. From then on, he worked as an artist for the rest of his life. From 1938, he was called up for labor and military service by the National Socialist government and was stationed in the Flak Regiment 32 in Berlin-Schulzendorf until 1945.
From 1944 to 1945, he had a relationship and pen pal relationship with the soldier Zdenek Bena from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now the Czech Republic). After the end of the war, he was a prisoner of war until October 1945. His artistic career began in 1947 with his first exhibitions and the publication of pen and ink drawings on E.T.A. Hoffmann. Due to hepatitis, he stayed in Lugano from 1947 to 1948, where he made contact with the Zurich homosexual organization “Der Kreis”. Between 1951 and 1954, he had solo exhibitions in Berlin and Lüdenscheid and worked with the German homosexual press and the Hamburg publishing house Christian Hansen Schmidt. In 1952, he met his long-term partner Hans-Joachim Pählke. From 1954 to 1961, he was an actor at the Volksbühne in East Berlin until the construction of the Berlin Wall put an end to his work there. In 1963, his partner Hans-Joachim Pählke unexpectedly took his own life; Eberhardt dealt with the loss in his art. From the 1960s to the 1980s, Brucks worked as a freelance graphic artist and took on small film roles until he died in Berlin in 2008.
The Eberhardt Brucks Collection is the largest biographical collection of the Schwules Museum. Acquired in 2008, it comprises around 15,000 individual items and bundles – including around 1000 artistic works by Brucks, more than 2000 photographs and slides taken by him and almost 5000 letters, postcards and telegrams from and to Brucks. In addition to his work as an artist, graphic designer and photographer, the collection also shows Bruck’s own collecting activities, from books and gray literature, autograph cards and collectible pictures, to porcelain and his own furniture.
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neo seefried is a freelance curator, podcaster, author, cultural mediator, researcher, activist, artist, club door selector and distribution expert. neo’s mediation work deals with queer life realities and the historical change of possible narratives. They are genderfluid and non-binary. neo studied Art Education at the University of Leipzig and Art Education Curatorial Studies at the Zurich University of the Arts. They is a founding member of the interdisciplinary, queer, collective practice ( ) s-p-a-c-e, founded in 2022, which publishes and podcasts on queer club culture in Berlin. neo holds workshops, readings, lectures and panel discussions, for example at the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Haus für Poesie in Berlin, the Tanzquartier Wien, the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg, the LSVD and many more.
Visual: Anna Unterstab
“Strategies of Resilience” is an exhibition with objects from Eberhardt Bruck’s collection at the Schwules Museum, as well as artistic works by Genesis Kahveci, Florian Hetz, Sarnt Utamachote and Rein Vollenga. Funded by the Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt.
Schwules Museum
Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
Jan Künemund, mino Künze
Tel.: +49 176 84995444
Mail: presse@schwulesmuseum.de
Press Photos
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