In the organizer's words:

Finding Margarita Neiteler. The Photographing Nun - Images of the Destruction and Reconstruction of Cologne Cathedral, 1945-1949

November 30, 2025 to January 18, 2026
Rooms of the Michael Horbach Foundation
Wormser Street 28
50677 Cologne

With pictures by Sister Margarita Neiteler,
curated by Manfred Linke, photographer and relative of Sr. Margarita Neiteler

Maria Margarita Neiteler, a largely unknown nun and "cathedral photographer", was born in Greven on February 14, 1913. From 1938 until the 1960s, she worked as an X-ray nurse at the Hohenlind Hospital in Cologne. At the end of the Second World War, she documented the damage and reconstruction of the cathedral with a high standard of photography. Her unique photographs, some of which are now part of the holdings of the Historical Archive with the Rheinisches Bildarchiv and other Cologne historical archives, bear witness to her talent and her eye for historical moments. Despite her artistic significance, her life's work remained undiscovered and largely unexplored for a long time. Exact biographical data was previously unknown.

In 1999, the Cologne-based photographer and curator Manfred Linke met Sister Margarita Neiteler, his aunt-in-law by marriage, in their shared hometown of Greven. They discussed the possibility of finding and reappraising her work as well as a joint exhibition. Some time before her death on September 29, 2002, he received a letter from her and some of her pictures. Triggered by a publication in the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper, Manfred Linke picked up the trail again 24 years later and researched and compiled the biographical and photographic information that had been missing until then.

Linke is now presenting her extensive work in an exhibition for the first time. On display are 34 photographs, some of them large-format, supplemented by a number of personal letters to the family from the same period as well as books. Her photographic work is not only of high quality and importance from an art historical perspective: "She was probably the only Cologne photographer to take pictures at and in the cathedral around the end of the war," says Manfred Linke.

https://manfred-linke.com/portfolio/finding-margarita-neiteler/