ANNE HEINLEIN - GEHEIMES LAND

In the organizer's words:

November 9 - December 15, 2024

SECRET LAND

Around twelve percent of the entire area of the former GDR were restricted areas. They were commonplace and everywhere. There were mysterious stories and suspicions about what took place in the restricted areas and nobody was supposed to enter them without permission. The consequences could be fatal. The NVA (National People's Army) and the GSSD (Group of Soviet Armed Forces) had the largest areas. After the end of the GDR, most of them were disbanded. The stationed troops withdrew from the areas. What remained was a landscape that is now extensively contaminated by ammunition remnants and chemical substances. Hundreds of hectares of soil-contaminated land that has become a nature reserve because no one can enter this land without danger. Concreted squares and paths, buildings that are rotting because they have been left to nature. What has happened is covered over, the past becomes a narrative. Memories remain, truths come to light and are covered up again. There is no clear good and evil, but things have happened that take your breath away. An absolute truth cannot be defined. Too many different perceptions blur what has happened.

For GEHEIMES LAND, Anne Heinlein explored the former restricted areas of the NVA and GSSD. She researched the files of the GDR's State Security, spoke to contemporary witnesses and roamed the restricted areas. I walked through dense forest, past paths, disused railroad embankments, over former military training areas, climbed into old, partly dilapidated buildings and bunkers to find traces. Vast areas that seem impenetrable, like an independent country. The result is large-format, black and white photographs of the restricted areas. Images of unconditional forest, dense undergrowth or underbrush. Natural stages that open up spaces to be filled and show nature, covering up what has happened and the times in which it happened.

Next to them are colorful photographs of surfaces with peeling paint or old wallpaper, which were created in the rotting buildings and tell as a trace of the past time, still lifes of empty cartridge cases, food containers or gas masks that become relics, reproductions from school soldier teaching material, that tell of war and combat strategies and documentary images from the files of the GDR's state security, which show a variety of reports with crime scene documentation and tell of soldiers who trained with weapons in bunkers and tanks for emergencies in order to be trained to serve the state in war. They were molded, drilled and imprisoned. Some were injured, had accidents and died, others were shot. Those who could not stand it took their own lives. Others changed, adapted. Still others exercised the power they gained through their role within the restricted area and humiliated other people. The files seem endless and were top secret at the time.

GEHEIMES LAND hints at people and their fates on various levels and does not allow any precise localization. Much remains enigmatic and diffuse. Images open doors and close them again. Stories can be assumed, a sense of the past can be felt. Truths become symbolic in images, other images refute them. It is a game with different positions, all of which become part of the historical search for truth. Thus the work is an artistic examination of GDR history, of military drill that prepares for the great war in apparent perfection, of the past and how we can come to terms with it, of the appearance of reality and hidden truths that cannot be clearly reconstructed in retrospect.

History only ever works in memory. Truths become fragmentary and uncertain the more time passes. New experiences are added, obscuring the old ones. For the people who were there, a feeling for what they experienced, for the past, remains. For others, it is a contemplation and search for truth, which is always individual due to the personal experiences of each person.

Anne Heinlein

Vita

born 1977 in Potsdam, 1999 graduated as a photographer, 2000 STUDY of photography at the HGB Leipzig with Prof. Joachim Brohm and Prof. Timm Rautert, 2006 Diploma of Fine Arts, 2016 MWFK Brandenburg, Art Prize Fine Arts, 2017 VG BILDKUNST, publication funding BGII, lives and works in Potsdam.

A project within the framework of "Connecting Worlds - Kulturland Brandenburg 2024/2025"

Kulturland Brandenburg 2024/2025 is funded by the Ministry of Science, Research and Culture and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Regional Planning of the State of Brandenburg.

With the kind support of the Brandenburg savings banks and the Investitionsbank des Landes Brandenburg