»Between destruction and hope«

The Soviet photographer Valery Faminsky (1914-1993) was commissioned in 1945 to accompany the Red Army's advance on Berlin. He was to take photographs of the first aid treatment of wounded soldiers for the Red Army's Military Medical Museum. Faminsky remained in Berlin from the end of April to the end of May 1945, documenting more than he was supposed to. His photographs differed from the heroizing photographs of his colleagues; he photographed the consequences of the war without embellishment: Faminsky's photos also show dead Soviet soldiers, fleeing civilians and ruins, but also soldiers playing cards, curious glances from civilians and moments of human care. Without permission, Faminsky kept the negatives of his 500 or so impartial photographs. After the war, they were forgotten until Faminsky's descendants put them up for sale online in 2016. The Ukrainian photographer Arthur Bondar (*1983), who works artistically with archive material and found objects on collective memory, acquired the photographs and, with the help of Ana Druga and Thomas Gust from Galerie Buchkunst Berlin, ensured that they were presented to the public. 38 of Faminsky's photographs are on display from March 22 to April 13 in the exhibition Between destruction and hope. The Oderland and Berlin in the spring of 1945 – Photographs by Valery Faminsky at the Schloss Neuhardenberg Foundation.

The exhibition is being held to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Seelow Heights, which took place from 16 to 19 April 1945, just 15 kilometers from Neuhardenberg Castle. The battle was the largest of the Second World War on German soil and was decisive for the surrender of the Nazi regime on May 8, 1945.

On April 5 at 3 p.m., Arthur Bondar will talk about his archive find and give a guided tour of the exhibition. Afterwards, the actress Jutta Hoffmann will give a reading from 5 p.m. onwards with selected testimonies from soldiers and civilians from the spring of 1945.