Pursued by the Past
“A street wants to end its history and forget.”
— Irena Vrkljan
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, artists repeatedly questioned the extent to which West Germany had distanced itself from National Socialist ideology and racist structures. During this period, both old and new forms of racism became increasingly visible. Terms such as “Unterwanderung” (infiltration) and “Überfremdung” (foreign infiltration) – which portrayed individuals with migration histories as threats – resurfaced in public and academic debates.
Mehmet Aksoy
Nâzım Hikmet im Gefängnis
(1977)
In 1977, Mehmet Aksoy organised an exhibition at Kunstamt Kreuzberg, then under the direction of Krista Tebbe, in honour of Nâzım Hikmet (1902–1963). The poet and playwright is regarded as an outstanding representative of modern Turkish literature. Because of his political activities – Hikmet was a committed communist – he spent 17 years in prison in Turkey. In 1951, he fled to the Soviet Union. With his writings on working-class struggles and social resistance, he was an influential figure of the international left who transcended national borders. Aksoy’s sculpture portrays Hikmet behind bars. The inscription is a quote from a 1948 poem dedicated to Laz İsmail (1902–1983). Born İsmail Bilen, he was active in the banned Turkish Communist Party. After a four-year imprisonment, he left Turkey in the mid-1930s, while Hikmet continued to advance his political fight from behind bars.
Kreuzberg: Kunst und Migration seit 1960, installation view, Gropius Bau, 2026
© Gropius Bau, photo: Rosa Merk
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Paolo Baratella
Fremdarbeiter – Arbeit muss frei machen
(1974)
In the mid-1970s, Paolo Baratella lived in West Berlin and was a fellow with the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. For his work Fremdarbeiter – Arbeit muss frei machen, he drew inspiration from the 1930 poster Ein neues Jahr (A New Year) by John Heartfield, a leading figure in the field of political photomontage. Heartfield’s poster calls for class struggle and depicts a metalworker striking hot steel. In Baratella’s print, the steel is replaced by the head of a man wearing a top hat; in Heartfield’s work, this figure repeatedly embodies the ruthless entrepreneur during the Nazi regime. Baratella’s use of this figure alludes to Germany’s Nazi history, from which companies continued to profit after 1945. Terms such as “Gastarbeiter” (guest worker) and “Fremdarbeiter” (foreign worker), as well as key recruitment and selection practices, have their origins in the Nazi era. This also applies to the “Ausländergesetz” (Aliens Act) of the 1960s, which severely restricted migrants’ freedom of movement and right of residence.
Kreuzberg: Kunst und Migration seit 1960, installation view, Gropius Bau, 2026
© Gropius Bau, photo: Rosa Merk
Akbar Behkalam
Cemal Kemal Altun
(1995)
The drawing, with the outline of an abstracted falling figure, is dedicated to Cemal Kemal Altun. In 1981, the 20-year-old student fled the Turkish military dictatorship and came to West Berlin. In Turkey, Altun had been falsely accused of murder and applied for asylum in West Germany on the grounds of political persecution. Despite an appeal by the European Commission of Human Rights, the German government initiated extradition proceedings with the Turkish authorities. After more than a year in detention, Altun threw himself from the sixth floor of the Higher Administrative Court in Charlottenburg on the second day of his proceedings, fearing extradition to the dictatorial regime. Behkalam’s work references this fatal act. The drawing’s central void also alludes to the form of the memorial he designed for Altun at the same time. Since 1996, the memorial has stood in front of the former courthouse, commemorating Altun’s story while warning against the Federal Republic’s violent migration and deportation policies of the 1980s
Sarah Haffner
1938/1983
(1982)
Sarah Haffner’s 1938/1983 refers to two distinct historical and political contexts: the era of National Socialism and the year 1983, when the painting was going to be exhibited for the first time. It was created for the exhibition 1933 – Wege zur Diktatur (1933 – Paths to Dictatorship) at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Berlin. The inscription “Nur für Arier” (For Aryans Only) evokes the escalating mechanisms of exclusion under Nazi racial ideology. From 1938 onward, people classified as non-Aryan – including Jews, whose identity cards were marked with the letter J, as well as Sinti and Roma, Black people and people of Slavic descent – were increasingly subjected to discrimination and persecution. The graffito “Türken raus” (Turks Out), in turn, points to the rise of racist hostility in the 1980s, primarily directed against migrant workers from Turkey, who at the time constituted the largest migrant community in West Germany. Together, these inscriptions expose who was considered welcome in German society during different historical periods – and who was excluded.
Kreuzberg: Kunst und Migration seit 1960, installation view, Gropius Bau, 2026
© Gropius Bau, photo: Rosa Merk
Stathis Logothetis
E236
(1978)
For the work E236, Stathis Logothetis sewed canvas soaked in red acrylic paint onto a wooden framework. Where the material had torn, he patched it with pieces of canvas, like dressing a wound. Injury and healing therefore become intertwined. Before turning to painting, Logothetis studied medicine and, as a young man, was drafted into the Greek Civil War. His works inscribe personal experience and embodied knowledge into the canvas. Performance plays a central role in this process. As a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program in the early 1970s, Logothetis began to physically enter his paintings for the first time. This gesture became even more pronounced in the series Taftisi (Identification). In a number of performances, the artist brought the works to life, appearing to merge with them. He not only placed his own body at the centre of the work but also challenged the role of the audience, reflecting their gaze back at them as “spectators of the spectators”.
Antonio Skármeta
Aufenthaltserlaubnis
(1978)
Writer, screenwriter and filmmaker Antonio Skármeta fled to Europe through Argentina in 1973 after the military coup in Chile. In 1975, he arrived in West Berlin through the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, where he lived until the late 1980s. Aufenthaltserlaubnis is a film about life in exile, ranging from communal leisure activities to visits to government offices for permit renewals. Above all, however, it celebrates the fall and the approaching end of numerous dictatorships during this period: By Idi Amin in Uganda, Dimitrios Ioannidis in Greece, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in Iran, Francisco Franco in Spain and António de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal. Painted as caricatures on large cardboard signs, the exiles symbolically overthrow the dictators before embarking on their return journeys to their home countries. However, Augusto Pinochet’s brutal rule in Chile persisted; his dictatorship only ended with free elections in 1990.
Irena Vrkljan
Widmung für ein Haus (Dedication to a House)
(1966)
The life of writer and filmmaker Irena Vrkljan was shaped by numerous political upheavals. As a child, she fled the Nazi occupation of Belgrade with her family and settled in Zagreb. Years later, she published poems and worked as a screenwriter for a Yugoslav television station there. In 1966, she came to West Berlin on a DAAD literary scholarship and enrolled in the inaugural directing class at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie where she made her debut film, Widmung für ein Haus. The film features shots of the facade of an abandoned building near Potsdamer Platz and the Berlin Wall, which are accompanied by a poetic text narrated by the artist herself. She presents the ruin as a witness to crimes. Until 1945, the National Socialist Volksgerichtshof (People’s Court), where politically persecuted individuals were tried, stood next to it. Against the backdrop of West Berlin’s demolition efforts during the 1950s and 1960s, Vrkljan resists strategic forgetting by preserving these traces.
Hanefi Yeter
Für Celalettin Kesim
(1980)
Hanefi Yeter’s wooden stele bears the Turkish inscription “Onlar Ümidin Düşmanıdır Sevgilim” (They are the enemies of hope, darling), a line from the poet and playwright Nâzım Hikmet (1902–1963). This work serves as the model for a monument to Celalettin Kesim. In 1973, Kesim left Turkey for Germany to work as a lathe operator at the Borsig engineering company. During this time, he was also politically active. On January 5, 1980, Kesim was murdered by Turkish Islamists (Millî Görüş) and right-wing extremists (MHP). The attack followed an action during which Kesim and other leftist activists distributed flyers in Kreuzberg warning of the impending military coup in Turkey. His funeral march, attended by over 10,000 people, became an annual demonstration against fascist forces both domestically and abroad in the following years.
Kreuzberg: Kunst und Migration seit 1960, installation view, Gropius Bau, 2026
© Gropius Bau, photo: Rosa Merk
Serpil Yeter
Gesellschaftliche Bedrohung
(1987)
Serpil Yeter’s paintings are characterised by images of carrying and being carried, physical closeness and bodies merging with their surroundings. In the early 1980s, she moved to West Berlin as a young artist and lived there until 2002. During this time, her work frequently depicted scenes of everyday life, such as people on the underground, on their way to work and in public and private spaces. She focused on the encounters between different groups in urban spaces, from seniors to workers to punks, as well as on her own feelings of being out of place. Her work Gesellschaftliche Bedrohung emphasises that these encounters can also be stifling. To the artist, the crowd in the upper part represents “an anonymous mass weighing down on the female body” – a feeling of helplessness, fear and social confinement that she captures in her paintings.