Munich Displaced

Background

The exhibition project “Munich Displaced” is dedicated to the research of a blank space in German Remembrance Culture: the history of the so-called Displaced Persons (DPs). This term refers to all those foreign civilians who, after 1945, found themselves outside their homeland as a result of the Second World War and were unable to return to it without further ado. The group of DPs is complex and diverse, including political prisoners, concentration camp inmates, civilian Eastern European workers, former forced laborers, and collaborators. The documentation of their history was compiled in a broad research for the city of Munich and edited for two different exhibitions in the city.

With the exhibition “Munich Displaced. After 1945 and without a Homeland”, the Munich City Museum sheds light on the history of this group from a local perspective and shows how these migrants lived and worked in Munich after 1945 with the will to shape their own destiny. With the exhibition “MUNICH DISPLACED. The Surviving Remnant”, the Jewish Museum Munich is focusing on the history of the Jewish DPs in Munich.

A special challenge for gewerkdesign was to conceive and realize two exhibitions at two locations, both graphically and spatially. The exhibitions, which run in parallel, place the history of the DP communities in an interrelated context, which also comes to bear in terms of design, through an overarching graphic and design concept. The two museums on opposite sides of Munich’s Sankt-Jakobs-Platz were connected and put into a dialogue by including the outdoor space in the design. In the Jewish Museum, the exhibition architecture traces the local infrastructure of the Jewish DP communities along Möhlstraße. Exhibition design and graphics of both exhibitions evoke the image of fleetingness and sketchiness. Temporary buildings, staggered or fading dots and letters, abstracted maps, and interrupted lines characterize the aesthetics of both exhibitions and also refer to the work-in-progress nature of the unfinished research project.

Furthermore, the exhibition is designed to be sustainable. The individual exhibition elements were produced cost-effectively, with low overall material consumption. The graphics have been printed predominantly on paper or cotton textiles to keep the use of plastics and composites as low as possible.

Portfolio/ Range of Services:

Exhibition design and architecture, exhibition and media graphics, communication design, production management