Overview of “Sixteen Objects” in an atrium, with staggered display cases, curtains and photographic panels.

Sixteen Objects

What can an object reveal about what a place has lost?

Context

For the first time in Yad Vashem’s seventy-year history, objects from its collection returned to Germany. Sixteen personal belongings, each connected to a place in one of today’s sixteen federal states, tell the stories of Jewish people who once lived there and of the lives and communities destroyed by the Holocaust.
A starting point for the exhibition was a photograph taken in Kiel in 1931. It shows a Hanukkah menorah in the window of a Jewish family’s home, with a Nazi flag visible on the building opposite. A personal object and its historical surroundings appear within the same image, foreground and background telling different but inseparable parts of the story.
How can this relationship between an object and the place it comes from become a design principle for an exhibition?

Approach

To reconnect the sixteen objects with the places they came from, two photographers travelled across Germany to places significant to the lives of the people to whom the objects had belonged. At each of these sixteen locations, they made a new photograph of the place as it exists today.
The exhibition translates thereby the composition of the historical photograph into space. Each historical object is placed in relation to a contemporary photograph of its place of origin. Object and site face one another, bringing an individual story into direct contact with the place in which it once unfolded.
This relationship shapes the exhibition architecture and graphic system throughout. Rather than reconstructing the past, the exhibition brings its traces into the present.

Historical black-and-white photograph of a Hanukkah menorah in a window, with a swastika flag on the building opposite.
Rosi (Rahel) Posner’s photograph of the family’s Hanukkah menorah in Kiel, 1931, with a Nazi flag visible on the building opposite. The relationship between object and place became the starting point for the exhibition’s design concept.
Entrance module for “Sixteen Objects”, with a map of Germany and a large historical window photograph.
Golden-brown map of Germany with sixteen numbered locations and a corresponding list of objects.
Exhibition view with illuminated object cases and curved panels displaying contemporary building photographs.
Small display case beside a beige curtain, with a large photograph of a multi-storey building behind it.
Inscribed historical wooden box in a transparent case in front of a large photograph of houses.
Inscribed wooden Torah ark in a display case, framed by a beige curtain and a building photograph.
Side view of an exhibition module with a portrait and biographical text beside a display case containing a wooden Torah ark.
Close-up of the panel about Daniel Cohen’s handmade Torah ark, with a historical portrait and biographical text.
White exhibition panel about Anneliese Dreifuss’s miniature ceramic kitchen, with a historical group photograph and biography.
White exhibition panel about Lilo Ermann’s autograph book, with a historical portrait and biographical text.
White exhibition panel about the Posner family’s Hanukkah menorah, with a family photograph and historical context.
Contemporary view of a tall building with regular rows of windows and orange accents behind dense greenery.
To reconnect the sixteen objects with the places they came from, two photographers, Marvin Systermans and Christina Stohn, travelled across Germany to places significant to the lives of the people to whom the objects had belonged. At each of these sixteen locations, they made a new photograph of the place as it exists today. The photograph above by Marvin Systermans shows the hospital ‘Am Urban,’ where Hermann Zondek once worked.
Narrow green stairway between pale residential buildings with front gardens.
Ehemaliger Wohnort der Familie Dreifuss in Stuttgart, fotografiert von Christina Stohn.
Residential building with a partly stripped facade, differently coloured wall areas and a blue-and-yellow garden fence.
Former residence of Hermann and Karoline Süss in Mainz, photographed by Christina Stohn.
Hand taking a “Sixteen Objects” booklet from an exhibition stand divided into three compartments.
Exhibition booklet spread about Lore Stern’s doll Inge, with a large object photograph and biographical text.
Full-spread contemporary courtyard photograph with residential buildings, bins and a graffiti-covered wall.
Booklet spread with historical portraits, group photographs and an image of the Dreifuss family home.
Booklet spread with two gold-coloured Torah finials and text about Bertha and Jakob Weinschenk.
White “Sixteen Objects” poster with golden-brown typography and a Hanukkah menorah as its large central image.
White “Sixteen Objects” poster with a wooden Torah ark and golden-brown exhibition details.
White “Sixteen Objects” poster with a black upright piano, round stool and golden-brown typography.
White “Sixteen Objects” poster with a long wooden wind instrument and a flared bell.
White “Sixteen Objects” poster with a seated blonde doll wearing patterned pyjamas.
Street wall covered with repeated “Sixteen Objects” posters featuring a doll, Torah ark, piano, wind instrument and menorah.
Project Title
Sixteen Objects
Client
Friends of Yad Vashem Germany
Year
2023
Services
Exhibition Graphics, Campaign Design, Editorial Design
Role
Concept Development, Art Direction, Design, Project Coordination
Curation
Ruth Ur
Graphic Design
Sarah Fricke, Lea Sievertsen, Pawel Wolowitsch (Distaff Studio)
Exhibition Architecture
Kooperative für Darstellungspolitik
Location Photography
Marvin Systermans, Christina Stohn
Object Photography
Noam Preisman
Location
Paul-Löbe-Haus, Deutscher Bundestag, Berlin
Image Credits
Marvin Systermans