Fellows

Fügung des Schicksals - R. Stein Wexler

R. Stein Wexler ( United States )

Fügung des Schicksalsis a community-engaged investigation of invisible histories and contemporary urban redevelopment in Berlin. 

In 2015, the massive, vacant Haus der Statistik complex became the subject of a collaborative, community-oriented redevelopment project. The highly publicized re-use of the Haus der Statistik as a creative and residential development has ensured the preservation of the architecture and narrative of the building, while Fügung des Schicksals will unearth and voice the history concealed beneath it.

The Gerlachstraße Jüdisches Altenheim, located at Gerlachstraße 18-21, was a Jewish nursing home. During WWII, the home was seized and used as a Nazi collection point for elderly Jews being transported to concentration camps. In the late 1960s, structures on the site that were not destroyed by Allied bombing were razed to make way for the DDR's Haus der Statistik. 

The planned overhaul of the site presents an opportunity to engage the current and future residential community and creative tenants at the Haus der Statistik with the history post-war urban development has obscured.

Further Information

R. Stein Wexler is Fellow to the German Chancellor’s Fellowship of Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung.