Wednesday 26 November 2008 | 11:00 hrsVenue: Martin-Gropius-Bau, CinemaOrganizerBerliner Festspiele

Gropius Bau

Gropius Bau 2023

Gropius Bau, Kino (Untergeschoss)

Gropius Bau, Cinema (Lower ground floor)

Robert Lebeck. Fotografien 1955–2005

Robert Lebeck. Photographs 1955–2005

Pressekonferenz „Robert Lebeck. Fotografien 1955–2005“

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Reflexe und Reflexionen

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Located in the centre of Berlin, the Gropius Bau is a lively place for encounters with art and each other. As an internationally renowned exhibition centre, it offers space for major exhibitions and performances by contemporary artists.

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The Gropius Bau is closed on Tuesdays.

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Gropius Bau 2025

Events

Exhibitions & Projects

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Tanz im August, presented by HAU Hebbel am Ufer, is a festival of contemporary dance in Berlin. With three productions, it will once again be a guest at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele this year. The pre-sale of some programme highlights has already started.

Tanz im August

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Eight selected concert highlights of Musikfest Berlin 2025 have already been published and are on sale. These include guest performances by the world’s best symphony orchestras and choirs from the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Italy, which are rarely heard in Berlin.

Musikfest Berlin

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The international literature festival berlin, or ilb for short, is considered one of the most important literary festivals in the world. The programme for the 25th&nbsp;ilb will take place from 11 to 20&nbsp;September 2025. The Young Programme will run from 15 to 24&nbsp;September 2025. The main venue is the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, with additional locations for the Young Programme including Theater an der Parkaue and the Gelbe Villa.

25th international literature festival berlin

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This year, 53&nbsp;ensembles from all over Germany applied for the Tanztreffen der Jugend. 8&nbsp;young ensembles between contemporary and urban dance were chosen by the jury for the final selection. They will show their work at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele in autumn.

Tanztreffen der Jugend

More Berliner Festspiele

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The international literature festival berlin, or ilb for short, is considered one of the most important literary festivals in the world. The programme for the 25th&nbsp;ilb will take place from 11 to 20&nbsp;September 2025. The Young Programme will run from 15 to 20 September 2025. The main venue is the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, with additional locations for the Young Programme including Theater an der Parkaue and the Gelbe Villa.

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The Performing Arts Season once again brings renowned international dance, theatre and performance productions to the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and the Gropius Bau. In this edition, the series focuses primarily on various concepts of identity.

Performing Arts Season

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YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND

Since the 1950s, Yoko Ono has been ahead of her time, leaving her mark on visual arts, music and activism. To honour her groundbreaking work, Gropius Bau presents the comprehensive solo exhibition&nbsp;YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND. Spanning the first floor and the atrium of Gropius Bau, the show brings together over 200 works from seven decades, revealing her radical approach to language, art and participation that continues to speak to the present moment.

YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND

Key Visual Neu

Marking twenty years since artist, writer and performer Vaginal Davis made Berlin her home, Gropius Bau presents the first comprehensive solo exhibition of her work in Germany. In her oeuvre, punk meets glamour, queer activism meets Black counter-culture and resistance meets desire.&nbsp;Fabelhaftes Produkt&nbsp;offers&nbsp;an overview of Davis’ practice and artistic collaborations.

Vaginal DavisFabelhaftes Produkt

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Playing, laughing, making noise, letting off steam, doing nothing – all in an exhibition venue! With BAUBAU, the artist Kerstin Br&auml;tsch designed an&nbsp;admission-free play space for kids, where more is allowed than forbidden. On Gropius Bau’s ground floor, colourful wallpapers, structures, objects and open-ended material called “loose parts” configure flexible spaces that are shaped by children’s activities.

BAUBAU

Spielen in der Stadt

What has been the role of play in public space, both historically and in the present? Complementing BAUBAU, our free play space for kids, Gabriela Burkhalter’s&nbsp;Playing in the City&nbsp;presentation traces the history of playgrounds since their emergence in 1900 to today. The free presentation is open to all and can be seen in two rooms next to the play space’s entrance.

Playing in the City

Currently at Gropius Bau

Vaginal Davis: Fabelhaftes Produkt

Current Exhibitions

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Widely regarded as one of the most original and influential artists of the 20th century, Diane Arbus’ bold black-and-white photographs demolish aesthetic conventions and upend all certainties. With Diane Arbus: Konstellationen, Gropius Bau presents the most comprehensive exhibition of her work to date. Featuring 454 prints, many of them shown here for the first time, Konstellationen offers new perspectives on Arbus’ iconic images and the wide range of her portraiture.

Diane Arbus: Konstellationen

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Ligia Lewis is a central figure in redefining performance within the context of the visual arts. In her multifaceted practice, she combines performance, live installation and film. &nbsp;From autumn 2025, Gropius Bau presents I’M NOT HERE FORRRRR…, the artist and choreographer’s most comprehensive solo exhibition to date. It brings together new and existing works that explore themes of race, gender, violence and resistance.

Ligia Lewis: I’M NOT HERE FORRRRR…

Preview Autumn 2025

The international literature festival berlin, or ilb for short, is considered one of the most important literary festivals in the world. The programme for the 25th&nbsp;ilb will take place from 11 to 20&nbsp;September 2025. The Young Programme will run from 15 to 20 September 2025. The main venue is the Haus der Berliner Festspiele.

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With CHEAP, Larry, Evita Manji, New Noveta, otay:onii and Keioui Keijaun Thomas

Sp&auml;tschicht x Creamcake

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The Practice – What Moves Artists

The Practice – What Moves Artists&nbsp;is a new book series by Gropius Bau that invites artists to showcase a practice that they pursue, that has influenced them or that has been with them for a long time. In the second volume of the series, artist, performer and author Vaginal Davis looks back on the saucy underground scenes of Los Angeles and Berlin together with former bandmates.&nbsp;On Dangerous Ground recounts past gigs, spectacular live performances and well-kept secrets.

Vaginal Davis: On Dangerous Ground

Located in the centre of Berlin, the Gropius Bau is a lively place to encounter art and each other. The internationally renowned institution stages large-scale exhibitions and performances by contemporary artists. Its diverse events focus on exchange and discussion, bringing together local and global perspectives.&nbsp;

About the Gropius Bau

We are looking forward to welcoming you back in mid-March with the reopening of our play space, <a href="${link:{uuid:{df42e57d-a14a-4b44-a5e4-9d3e7dcab5a6},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/baubau}}}">BAUBAU</a> (on 22 March), and two exhibitions, <a href="${link:{uuid:{55d64239-53fe-4b12-8567-a63191c6cae4},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/2025/ausstellungen/vaginal-davis}}}">Vaginal Davis: Fabelhaftes Produkt</a> (from 21 March) and <a href="${link:{uuid:{9618c701-bd05-432e-b688-5943e1f7fc57},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/2025/ausstellungen/yoko-ono}}}">YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND</a> (from 11 April). For details on opening hours and tickets, please visit our <a href="${link:{uuid:{62c3018b-bb40-46ce-8019-646ec5cd2e4a},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/besuch/informationen}}}">Information &amp; Tickets</a> page. We look forward to seeing you soon!

See you in March!

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Located in the centre of Berlin, the Gropius Bau is a lively place to encounter art and each other. The internationally renowned institution stages large-scale exhibitions and performances by contemporary artists.

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Festivals & Programme Series

Ausstellungen 2008

The Martin-Gropius-Bau is devoting a major exhibition to the work of the German photo reporter Robert Lebeck, who photographed for Revue, Kristall and Stern and was editor-in-chief of GEO magazine. He achieved fame with his feature Africa in the Year Zero (1960). The photo of a young African snatching King Baudouin’s sword during the Congo’s independence celebrations went round the world and still ranks as his “calling card” today.
Robert Lebeck was born in 1929, making him one of the generation who went to war young. In 1944 he was called up for service in the Wehrmacht and was sent to the Eastern Front, where he was taken prisoner in 1945. The fear of death but also the strength of his will to survive were things he discovered as a fifteen-year-old on the Oder river. behind a machine gun facing oncoming Soviet tanks.
He escaped death but not the collapse of his world and the dissolution of any kind of order. This can be seen in his pictures: in the gentle grief that marks many of his photographs, in the scepticism with which he regards all façades, in the inner distance he maintains from the people while showing them so clearly from close up.
In 1952, four months after he began work as a photographer, the first Lebeck photograph appeared on the front page of a newspaper. It was a picture of Konrad Adenauer in the Heidelberg Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung. Lebeck was 23 years old. He photographed weddings, football, carnivals, children, whores, lord mayors, jazz clubs, students and cripples. The subjects were numerous.
The idea that a picture should have an inner “integrity” was always the guiding principle of Lebeck’s work and the reason for his success. The breakthrough to fame came a few years later, in 1960, when he made a three-month tour of Africa for the Hamburg magazine Kristall. At last he would follow in the footsteps of those jungle explorers whose exploits had thrilled him as a boy. The reality turned out to be different. Africa was a political witch’s cauldron. It was the year in which the European powers were granting independence to their former colonies. In Leopoldville the world press gathered to cover the independence celebrations in the Belgian Congo, the largest country in Black Africa. Standing in an open car, King Baudouin was driven through the city. Suddenly a black youth seized his sword from him and ran off brandishing the captured weapon in triumph. Lebeck had shot the picture of the year. A symbol of the decline of the power of the white man and of the bloody chaos into which the Congo was soon to sink.
“Without luck you can never get anywhere,” was Lebeck’s comment on this, and indeed his reporter’s luck held up in a way that was almost uncanny. But was it only luck? He knows it wasn’t. His is a profession, an art, that requires a specific alertness, one that has nothing to do with the frantic celebrity-stalking Paparazzo caricatured so unmercifully by Fellini in La Dolce Vita. The alertness of the good reporter is of a discreet, unobtrusive kind. The “decisive moment” never lasts longer than a fraction of a second. Photography, including journalistic photography, can be dramatic, brutal, obscene, sentimental. Lebeck’s photography is none of these things, possessing as it does an irritating sobriety. His pictures always betray their creator’s way of looking at the world with the incisive eye of a surgeon. Many may see this as coldness, and it is true that his unemotional way of looking at people and things can sometimes be provocative. But it is precisely this air of cool detachment, the inner distance to the object and to what is happening, that gives Lebeck’s work the effect it has. He is not in the business of providing answers, merely allowing the picture to ask the question, which is why so many of these pictures become etched in the memory.
Apart from a few exceptions, the phenomenon generally known as “sensationalism” is absent from Lebeck’s work. He leaves that to others. All his work is pervaded by a sense of tongue-in-cheek irony, the attitude of a man who has seen through what is going on and finds it charming for this very reason. “Just go easy on the histrionics,” he seems to be thinking, even while he photographs these very histrionics.
This will be the most extensive presentation of pictures by Robert Lebeck to date. Also on view will be printed features giving a broad overview of the world of post-war periodicals. On the occasion of his 80th birthday (on 21 March 2009) 300 photographs – some familiar and some hitherto unknown – will recall the active years (1955-2005) of the former Stern reporter, who in 2007 was the first photographer to receive the Henri-Nannen Prize for his life’s work.

Robert Lebeck

Veranstaltungen Robert Lebeck

Exhibitions 2008

2008

Programm

Programme

The Berliner Festspiele organise a range of festivals and art exhibitions, concerts, dance and theatre performances, readings, lectures, debates and much more throughout the year. These events are presented at a range of locations across Berlin but are concentrated primarily at their own two venues: the Gropius Bau and the Haus der Berliner Festspiele.

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37th&nbsp;International Festival Berlin

Tanz im August

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The international literature festival berlin, or ilb for short, is considered one of the most important literary festivals in the world.

25th international literature festival berlin

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You can listen to some of our events this year digitally in the Berliner Festspiele Media Library after the live concerts.&nbsp;In addition, On Demand offers from past years are available.

Musikfest Berlin in the Media Library

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The international Jazzfest Research Lab&nbsp;welcomes academics and students to take a critical look at the festival’s archive, its programmes, creators, musicians and – last but not least – its myths. In two seminars during the summer semester of 2024, students from the Berlin University of the Arts and the University of Hildesheim have explored the festival’s history from various perspectives. In this film, the participants give a first look at how they dealt with their research subject.

Introducing: Jazzfest Research Lab

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To mark its 60th anniversary, Jazzfest Berlin is celebrating the cultural diversity of the neighbouring district of Moabit in collaboration with around 35 official partners and initiatives and with over 350 participants of all ages.&nbsp;In June 2024, interviews were conducted with 20 partners who presented their perspectives, wishes and ideas for the Jazzfest Community Lab Moabit. You can get a first impression with this film.

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Curated by&nbsp;Meron Mendel and Saba-Nur Cheema&nbsp;

From 13 to 16 June 2024, the interdisciplinary themed days “Reflexes &amp; Reflections” on the Israel-Palestine conflict and its consequences for society in Germany took place at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. You can now find video and audio recordings of the discourse events in the Berliner Festspiele Media Library!

Reflexes &amp; Reflections. 7 October, the war in Gaza and the debate in Germany

In the Media Library

Key Visual Musikfest Berlin 2025

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Major Orchestras and Vocal Ensembles as Guests in Berlin

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The 10 Remarkable Productions 2024

On 26 January, the Theatertreffen’s jury of critics announced their selection of 10 remarkable productions for the 2024 Theatertreffen at a press conference. Our congratulations go to the nominated production teams and all participants! The programme will be published on 5 April.

Theatertreffen 2024

“Radical Playgrounds”, an art parcours at the Gropius Bau, is spending eleven weeks exploring the differences between the concepts of play as competition and free play. Visitors are invited to walk and climb on the various installations and sculptures, to activate them and to shape the project collectively.

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Summer School 2025

As part of Performing Exiles there will be a Summer School from 16 to 28&nbsp;June 2025. This will offer workshops, seminars and mentoring. The participants will see the performances and guest productions in the festival programme and visit artistic initiatives and cultural institutions in Berlin that operate across a wide range of disciplines and contexts. A public presentation of the participants’ current work and research at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele will complete the programme.

Open Call

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The massacre, hostage-taking and rocket attacks by Hamas have shaken us deeply. The grue-some attack on Israel on 7&nbsp;October left us stunned and initially lost for words.

The Berliner Festspiele on Current Events in Israel, Gaza and Germany

With this letter of intent, we, the signing cultural organizations, express our intention to welcome, host and stage Ukrainian theatre artists in our venues, to make Ukrainian dramatic work visible to the European community.

Support of the Ukrainian Cultural Scene

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In August 2025, the festival Tanz im August will be a guest at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele with three productions. All productions are already on pre-sale.

Upcoming