A free guided tour of the exhibition Aufarbeiten: Sexual Violence against Children and Adolescents in the Name of Emancipation in German spoken language.

In a joint innovative exhibition, Schwules Museum (the gay museum) and Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung (the archive of German youth movements) deal with a difficult legacy: the uncritical handling of testimonies of the justification of sexualized violence against children and young people in their own collections.

The joint exhibition “Coming to Terms with the Past: Sexual Violence against Children and Adolescents in the Name of Emancipation” by Schwules Museum and Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung is self-critical examination of problematic legacies in both institutions’ collections. Schwules Museum (SMU) and Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung (AdJb) are central places of the commemoration of entangled, if different, emancipatory movements. Yet both archives contain evidence of the justification of sexualized violence against children and youth in documents and artifacts.

Both institutions are committed to reappraising the disturbing fact that the communities whose heritage they preserve created discursive space for, ideologically justified, and trivialized sexualized violence against children and adolescents. The exhibition confronts these histories by starting a conversation: about how it was possible that movements whose core concern was self-determination were so susceptible to the rhetoric of the perpetrators and so lacking in solidarity with the victims.

A registration is not necessary. Participation is for free, only the entrance to the SMU itself has to be paid.

Image: Chezweitz/SMU