September 7, 2025, 12 PM
September 13, 2025, 3 PM
September 21, 2025, 12 PM
September 28, 2025, 12 PM
October 5, 2025, 12 PM
October 18, 2025, 3 PM

The HerStory thematic tour explores life in East German Plattenbau complexes, urban planning, and memories of everyday life under socialism from a feminist perspective.

Prefabricated housing estates are not only an architectural legacy of GDR social policy but also continue to serve as places of residence that have carried a wide range of connotations over time. The exhibition uses installations, paintings, drawings, photographs, and films to explore the complex questions of belonging, community, and memory culture that prefabricated buildings have raised—from their beginnings in the 1970s to the present day.

This also includes the question of how East German Plattenbau complexes are viewed from a female perspective. The HerStory thematic tour introduces female artists featured in the exhibition and their works, including Sibylle Bergemann, Sabine Moritz, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, and Gisela Kurkhaus-Müller.

Their feminist and critical perspectives on the concept of socialist housing engage with themes such as the characteristic pass-through kitchen of “P2” prefabricated buildings, the anonymity of housing blocks and facades, and spatial experience.

In connection with the exhibited works, the tour also highlights female architects from the GDR. Although they also planned and designed housing complexes, squares, and public buildings, they remain far less well known than their male colleagues to this day.

The thematic tour will be led by artist and art educator Birgit Szepanski.