It was an intense and successful year of 2009 for the Dresden ‘Vastly Equal’ team. The subjects of the exhibition titled ‘brüche. DRESDEN | 1989 | DRESDEN’ (‘breaks’) were developed by five young undergraduates from their own life and experience world and were realised—after consultations with regards to contents and technology—in a remarkable way. The students demonstrated that examining the turning point of the year 1989, biographically inaccessible as it was to them, can lead to truly putting down roots in the past.

‘breaks’ asked questions about awakenings and changes associated with the year of 1989, but also about break-offs and break-downs in the urban community of Dresden. The exhibition considered the year of 1989 but mainly focussed on the transformation processes in Dresden from the 1980s until 2009. Four topics served to work out changes and continuities in urban life. Each individual illustration of the topic was followed chronologically by the three phases before, during, and after 1989. Thus, longitudinal profiles were created to show the changes in politico-social as well as individual daily life in Dresden. ‘breaks’ went beyond the focus on the history of rule and resistance in the GDR, common in public memory in 2009, without idealising the view on people’s daily lives before 1989.

One longitudinal profile illustrated Dresden’s development from former ‘valley of ignorant’ into a place of the pluralistic media world. ‘Information in formation‘ illustrated the position of the individual within Dresden’s media environment before and beyond the turning point of 1989, keeping in view the intra- German ‘asymmetrically interwoven parallel history’ (Christoph Kleßmann). A second section compared the politico-symbolic functions of demonstrations in Dresden and examined the ways they were staged. After all, the combination of mass protest and dialogue in Dresden had contributed considerably to the peaceful overthrow of the GDR regime in the autumn of 1989. ‘Who owns the street?’ showed demonstrations and their effects in the GDR, during the peaceful revolution, and within the pluralist society of the present. A third part illustrated general conditions and forms of civic commitment in Dresden’s Äußere Neustadt quarter. The neighbourhood had been threatened by demolition and reconstruction in prefabricated construction in 1989. ‘Let the old houses stand - Persistency and change in Dresden’s Äußere Neustadt quarter’ shed a light on insistence and transformation in this hip quarter, still today oscillating between favourable and unfavourable ascriptions. A fourth section was dedicated to the faiths, thus far underexposed, of those Dresdeners who had come to the GDR as so-called foreign contract workers before 1989. While even the German population had struggled with the new living conditions brought about by the political and economic-social changes in 1989/90, these times were so much harder for the former contract workers, who were not entitled to stay in Germany without a permanent job. ‘It was a courageous decision to stay!’ considers the life stories of some of these people who have by now become citizens of the City of Dresden.

All longitudinal profiles had in common the fact that they were presented as an opening to a new space of opportunity in the period after 1989. At the same time they pointed at issues that emerged as the downside of freedom and of the social and technological developments. ‘1989’ was midwife to those, too. The disintegration of familiar social milieus, the failure of urban self-administration approaches, the question of the individual’s chances to influence politics and, last but not least, the lamentable culmination of right-wing radical violence are aspects of the transformation of Dresden’s urban society that remain to be tackled. Insisting on individual room for maneuver and using it actively are messages realistically imparted to visitors of the exhibition, in particular to the younger ones.

‘breaks’ showed parts of the exhibitions in Prague, Wroclaw, and Bratislava. These offered a basis for comparisons, such as regarding the forms of political protest in Dresden and Wroclaw before, during, and after 1989. They underlined the interrelation of the events in the Central and Easterncentral European context of 1989: Informing about GDR refugees in the Federal German Embassy in Prague in the summer of 1989, the Prague exhibition illustrated the pre-history of the violent confrontations at Dresden main station and the beginning of the peaceful dialogue between demonstrators and ruling powers in Dresden examined in the ‘breaks’ exhibition. However, the most important aspect the Dresden exhibition had in common with those in other cities was the fact that it had been compiled in an inquisitive and friendly exchange between young people across borders.

The exhibition architecture was designed by Ruairí O’Brien. He managed to translate the conception of the historical longitudinal profile into the individual exhibition structures, at the same time integrating their multimedial presentation with photo, video, audio, and written materials. He built a distinguished individual installation allowing an artistic view on the events of 1989. All four topics were examined in detail in evening events with guests from Germany and abroad.

‘breaks’ was shown from 3 October to 13 November 2009 at St. Petersburger Straße 18, and then again between 2 February and 5 June 2010 at the Bautzner Straße Memorial, the former Dresden remand prison of the Stasi (secret service) - a site where the exhibition themes entered into a very special dialogue with the exhibition environment.

Sebastian Richter