Exil im Gepäck

In the organizer's words:

• Book presentation and discussion in cooperation with the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism at the Technical University of Dresden

Expelled from Germany by the National Socialists as a Jew and communist, the Jewish-German graphic artist Lea Grundig (1906-1977) took an adventurous route to Palestine in 1940. Surprisingly for many of her Jewish friends, she emigrated again in 1948 and returned to the land of the perpetrators. In 1949, she returned to her native city of Dresden, where she became a professor of graphic design at the Academy of Fine Arts. As a Western immigrant, many SED functionaries were critical of her, until she finally succeeded in inscribing herself as a loyal communist in the memoir literature of the GDR with "Gesichte und Geschichte", without denying her Jewish origins.

In her biography, historian Prof. Dr. Jeannette van Laak traces the life of the controversial, stubborn and sensitive artist and discusses it with Prof. Dr. Jörg Ganzenmüller, Director of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Research at the Technical University of Dresden.

From December 14, 2025 to December 12, 2026, Saxony will be celebrating TACHELES - Year of Jewish Culture. The theme year focuses on Jewish culture, history and Jewish life here locally.