An exhibition about the German occupation from the perspective of architecture and everyday life in the Wartheland (Warthegau) is opening at a significant location. At the Zamek Cultural Center ( an imperial castle rebuilt for Hitler), we will see numerous plans, blueprints and exhibits that tell the story of the attempted total transformation of the conquered territory. Dr. Aleksandra Paradowska, curator of the exhibition, tells us about them and the illusions associated with them.
Jakub Glaz: "Illusions of Omnipotence" is the first exhibition devoted to architecture and everyday life in the so-called Wartheland, which encompassed Greater Poland, part of Kuyavia and the land of Lodz after 1939. Where did these "illusions" come from? After all, German rule was tough, real and - until then - very efficient.
Aleksandra Paradowska: Every power, especially a totalitarian one, is a kind of illusion. This regularity applies to both the past and the present. All-powerful rule is impossible. There is always a certain margin of freedom left. This was also the case in the Wartheland, which was to become a model province of the Reich. The illusion of this omnipotent rule was shown in many propaganda materials. Architecture, often only planned and therefore in part illusory , played a very important role in this propaganda.
Jakub Glaz: In the areas incorporated into the Reich, Poles had a more difficult life than in the General Government. How large was the margin of freedom here?
Aleksandra Paradowska: It manifested itself, among other things, in the works of Poles and Jews shown at the exhibition. These include, for example, the projects of Szymon Wiesenthal, who drew a design for a café with a theater for a fellow prisoner in the camp. After the war it was to open on Glogowska Street in Poznan. An entire visual identity was even created. This also applies to art. On display at the exhibition is a graphic from Władysław Strzemiński 's 1941 series "War of the Houses." There are also drawings by Marian Bogusz. At the Mauthausen camp, the artist designed an artists' housing estate that was to stand on the post-camp grounds after the war. There is also a painting by Sara Gliksman, a Jewish painter who, working in the statistical office of the Lodz ghetto, had access to art materials. It is important to show that Poles and Jews also had a voice here.
"Illusions of Omnipotence" - exhibition at CK Zamek Poznań - curated by Aleksandra Paradowska.
Source: CK Zamek, ckzamek.pl
Jakub Glaz: For obvious reasons, however, the voice of the Germans dominates. In the lands incorporated into the Reich, intensive investments were underway, which conflicts with our established image of the war. What projects and realizations will we see at the exhibition?
Aleksandra Paradowska: Design included virtually every field. So we show both urban plans and building plans, as well as interior and furniture designs. These documents are present at the exhibition, as well as tables, chairs, ceramics, cutlery - objects that tell us how far this obsession with design and the comprehensive transformation of Polish space went. Perhaps the biggest surprise for the viewer will be the intentions regarding landscape. This was an extremely important area for the Germans. There were many concepts concerning, to a large extent, reforestation, because the forest could be useful during the war. There was the concept of the so-called "defensive landscape. Farmers, among others, were to play their role in guarding such landscapes. Of the completed works, the most important for the exhibition, on the other hand, is the Poznan Imperial Castle, where the exhibition takes place. During the war it was converted into the residence of the governor of the Wartheland, Arthur Greiser, and - in prospect - also Hitler himself. And it is these official apartments for the dictator that house the bulk of the exhibition. The interiors also serve as exhibits.
Jakub Glaz: Hitler never used them, by the way. There is probably no better place for this exhibition than a 1910 Prussian castle remodeled in the National Socialist spirit. The Germans even redesigned their own objects of power!
Aleksandra Paradowska: The Wilhelm II style was considered by the Nazis to be in bad taste, though - not in all its incarnations. Other representative buildings of the castle district from the same period were therefore preserved in their original form. An important part of the construction of the new order, on the other hand, were housing developments. To this day, in various smaller cities in Greater Poland and the Lodz area, these housing estates are recognized as "German" - built according to the same pattern.
"Illusions of Omnipotence" - exhibition at CK Zamek Poznań - curator: Aleksandra Paradowska
photo: Jakub Glaz
Jakub Glaz: Will we see in the exhibition the life of these spaces after the war?
Aleksandra Paradowska: We stop at the year forty-five. I deliberately do not show any contemporary photos. I want to encourage the viewer to look carefully around the surrounding space - to trace traces of history and look for the effects of the activities reported in the exhibition on their own. Indirectly, I want that after seeing it, the awareness of how much architecture influences everyday life will increase.
Jakub Glaz: You have been working on the subject of Nazi architecture in Polish lands for a long time. You are the co-editor of the first book on the subject published five years ago. So you have had the time and opportunity to collect sometimes surprising objects and documents.
Aleksandra Paradowska: In my search, I very quickly hit the trail of regional museums that have real treasures in their collections. These are often things that are not obvious, such as fragments of buildings or monuments. The exhibits were often brought to the curators by the residents of these localities. Later, they either lay in storage or made their way to permanent exhibitions. Dealing with these collections and the people running these museums was both an adventure and a pleasure. I also benefited from the private collections of Niels Gutschow, author of the book published in Polish a year ago, "Obsession with Order. German Architects Planning in Occupied Poland." These include numerous plans and blueprints from the collection of the researcher, who is otherwise the son of Nazi architect Konstantin Gutschow, who rebuilt Hamburg, among other places.
"Illusions of Omnipotence" - exhibition at CK Zamek Poznań - curator: Aleksandra Paradowska
photo: Jakub Glaz
Jakub Glaz: The topic of architectural "troubled heritage" has been studied more thoroughly in Poland only for more than two decades. Over time - more and more courageously. How does one talk about it in an exhibition? Showing such "ill-born" projects, architecture and objects still tends to be treading on fragile ice.
Aleksandra Paradowska: Exposing authentic exhibits from this period is always a big risk. I took them consciously. I firmly believe that without these troublesome authentic objects we cannot fully understand history. A finely crafted swastika on a representative vase may be controversial, but it makes one realize how strongly Nazi propaganda was influenced and to what extent Nazi symbols were ubiquitous. It gives a real sense of this obsession with omnipotence. There is another challenge of showing the time of occupation. It is about the way we look at the architecture and everyday life of that period. This is most often a German gaze. It therefore requires an appropriate commentary. In the Wartheland there was a ban on Poles owning cameras, not always enforced, but enforced nonetheless. So if we see photos taken by Germans without commentary, we will not realize what was not shown in them.
Jakub Glaz: For example, the residential barracks for Poles displaced from tenement houses in the center of Poznań.
Aleksandra Paradowska: For example. I couldn't find period photographs depicting them. The list of such missing photos is long.
Jakub Glaz: This gap is tried to be filled in the exhibition by richly illustrated letters sent from Poznań to the countryside by a father to his son, discovered a few years ago by Professor Piotr Korduba.
Aleksandra Paradowska: I think they not only helped the boy survive the separation from his parents, who were ordered to work in Poznań, but were also useful to the author himself, engineer Antoni Kowalski, who tried to tame this reality by drawing the city to his son.
Jakub Glaz: It was difficult to tame it, because in the Wartheland Poles were forbidden not only to own a camera. You even had to have a permit to ride a bicycle, and on a specific route. It was not allowed to ride streetcars during rush hour. There were discussions about whether it was worthwhile to ban the beating of Polish workers....
Aleksandra Paradowska: Hence the posters in the exhibition, which talk about such restrictions, may shock you. We have a huge poster on colored paper announcing the obligation to bow to any uniformed German. There are moving placards announcing death sentences on Poles for some trivial offense.
Jakub Glaz: And close to these posters of horror - picturesque postcards and a cheerful model of the rebuilding of Wieluń. The same one that the Germans razed to the ground on the morning of the first day of the war.
Aleksandra Paradowska: This mock-up is a unique monument. So far it is the only known and preserved model concerning German planning in Polish lands. It depicts a design by Herman Jensen, a distinguished German urban planner. It has been preserved in the Wieluń Land Museum. We juxtapose it in the exhibition with a model of the Lodz ghetto made by one of the prisoners, who wanted to document the reality around him. He did this during the war, hiding the model in a Lodz basement. The mock-up, unearthed from the rubble, found its way to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington after a long trek. The Onimo studio from Wroclaw made a faithful copy of it.
"Illusions of Omnipotence" - exhibition at CK Zamek Poznań
photo: Jakub Glaz
Jakub Glaz: There are also authentic debris. The exhibition starts with them.
Aleksandra Paradowska: These are the remains of buildings and monuments that were demolished both at the beginning of the war and during it. The idea was to programmatically erase traces of Polish and Jewish culture. Here we have fragments of the church in the aforementioned Wieluń. In the mass of rubble at the entrance there are also bricks from the demolished synagogue in Rawicz, loaned by the local authorities. In turn, the display cases contain smaller elements of monuments, such as the fingers of the Christ figure from the Monument to Gratitude by the well-known Poznań sculptor Marcin Rożek. We also have a fragment of the monument to Boleslaw the Brave that stood in front of the Gniezno Cathedral, also made by this artist.
Jakub Głaz: And just behind the rubble you can see through the door a sculpture of a muscular Aryan man. Next to him - a propaganda map of the Wartheland.
Aleksandra Paradowska: The map shows various historical buildings representing each city. It was meant to educate the Germans brought here in this way. This strong juxtaposition is due to the exhibition arranger Wojciech Luchowski, who, with his wonderful sense and knowledge of the castle's interiors, introduced the rubble. I knew I wanted to show them in the exhibition, but it was Wojciech who gave them a special character that harmonizes with Piotr Kacprzak's apt and discreet visual identification .
"Illusions of Omnipotence" - exhibition at CK Zamek Poznań - curator: Aleksandra Paradowska
photo: Jakub Glaz
Jakub Głaz: Behind the rubble, the statue and the map, we are watching propaganda films.
Aleksandra Paradowska: It's frightening how consistent on many levels this German propaganda was! Architecture and everyday life were precisely the areas it dealt with very intensively. The frames from these films correspond to the many objects in the exhibition, which are located in the following rooms - the aforementioned apartments for Hitler. In the first we see artifacts devoted to city planning and projects for the construction or reconstruction of specific buildings. In the second room, the interiors of offices and homes are present . Furniture and ceramics are standing, a photograph of a model settler's apartment in the East is visible. In the third room we have landscaping plans, including propaganda publications. The important thing is that you can flip through them on your own, as there are display copies next to historical exhibits. Notable in particular is the dictionary publication "How should I talk to my Polish worker?". In this room we also talk about the forced labor of the Jews and the camps in the Wartheland that are invisible in the projects.
"Illusions of Omnipotence" - exhibition at CK Zamek Poznań - curated by Aleksandra Paradowska.
photo: Jakub Glaz
Jakub Glaz: And at the end of the exhibition we end up in the fireplace room.
Aleksandra Paradowska: It was taken over by Iza Tarasewicz, who was invited by me, filling the entire cabinet intended for Hitler with her site-specific installation "Yellow Coal." The work is inspired by a story by Zygmunt Krzyzanowski, a Polish writer raised in Kyiv who wrote in Russian. In 1939, he described the creation of an alternative energy source - yellow coal, which is made from human hatred, anger and bile. A radio play based on this story, recorded by the Fonorama Foundation, also resonates with this installation. Both of these activities are very important to me, because I want the exhibition to provoke more general thoughts and a careful look at the present and contemporary conflicts.
Jakub Glaz: Rethinking is also supposed to be fostered by the "reflection room" that closes the exhibition .
Aleksandra Paradowska: It is located opposite the fireplace room. In it you will be able to read contemporary publications about planning in occupied Poland and historical studies, which were an important point of reference for us. This place was conceived by art historian Annika Wienert, who supported me curatorially . Equally supportive was Christhardt Henschel, to whom I owe many valuable substantive comments. Katharina Woniak of Augsburg University also joined the consultants at the final stage. In-depth reflections will also be fostered by the accompanying events we are planning, headed by an international discussion devoted to exhibitions on the architecture of the Third Reich in Europe, which will take place on December 7. And I invite you to the exhibition on behalf of myself and the Castle Cultural Center from Saturday until February 9.
Jakub Głaz
"Illusions of Omnipotence. Architecture and everyday life under German occupation"
exhibition at Poznan's Zamek Cultural Center
19.10.2024-9.02.2025 curator: Dr. Aleksandra Paradowska
Art historian, dealing with the history and theory of architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries. Urban assumptions, buildings and their designs interest her primarily as carriers of memory and identity. She is the author of books on villa architecture in Poznan and interwar hospitals and sanatoriums in Greater Poland. In recent years, her interests have focused mainly on the interrelationship of ideology and architecture in examples of German design in occupied Poland.Arrangement: Wojciech Luchowski
visual identification: Piotr Kacprzak
curatorial cooperation: Annika Wienert
historical consultation: Christhardt Henschel, Katarzyna Woniak
exhibition text editing: Sylwia Kordylas-Niedziółka
production: Bartosz Wisniewski
author of site specific installation in the Fireplace Room: Iza Tarasewicz
audio guide, sound design in the Exhibition Hall, radio play: FONORAMA
translation of the short story "Yellow Coal" by Zygmunt Krzyzanowski: Jerzy Czech
organizer: ZAMEK Cultural Center in Poznań
partners: German Historical Institute in Warsaw, Max Weber Foundation
The exhibition was co-financed by the Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation.
