SILENCE IN
HAPPYLAND
SILENCE IN HAPPYLAND is a research project by Romy Schmidt on the 33-year-long misremembered incidents that took place in the special children's residential home Spezialkinderheim Käthe Kollwitz in Moritzburg near Dresden.
At the gates of Dresden, the small town near Dresden tells itself through the narrative of romanticism: extensive park landscapes, baroque castles, impressive stallion parades, today still the family seat of the nobles of Saxony and film location for Hollywood. Famous for the original film set of one of the most popular fairy tale classics of the GDR, "Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella".
Moritzburg, also a university location with a focus on work with children and youth, attracts hundreds of marriage seekers and over 250,000 visitors a year on the trail of Cinderella's happy ending to its vivid, middle-class community of 9,000 souls, an ideal world of the upper middle class.
Not worth seeing among these attractions are the stories of the "other Cinderellas" without a happy ending, the many children and young people victims of the special children's residential home of Moritzburg –of a total of 42 special children's residential homes in the former GDR with about 60,000 victims–. No memorial plaque, no official notice on site tell anything about the other stories from the special children's residential home, Käthe Kollwitz. A place named, absurdly, after the socially and politically committed feminist and resistance artist Käthe Kollwitz.
Period: July to September 2022.
Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the program NEUSTART KULTUR.
SILENCE IN
HAPPYLAND
SILENCE IN HAPPYLAND is a research project by Romy Schmidt on the 33-year-long misremembered incidents that took place in the special children's residential home Spezialkinderheim Käthe Kollwitz in Moritzburg near Dresden.
At the gates of Dresden, the small town near Dresden tells itself through the narrative of romanticism: extensive park landscapes, baroque castles, impressive stallion parades, today still the family seat of the nobles of Saxony and film location for Hollywood. Famous for the original film set of one of the most popular fairy tale classics of the GDR, "Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella".
Moritzburg, also a university location with a focus on work with children and youth, attracts hundreds of marriage seekers and over 250,000 visitors a year on the trail of Cinderella's happy ending to its vivid, middle-class community of 9,000 souls, an ideal world of the upper middle class.
Not worth seeing among these attractions are the stories of the "other Cinderellas" without a happy ending, the many children and young people victims of the special children's residential home of Moritzburg –of a total of 42 special children's residential homes in the former GDR with about 60,000 victims–. No memorial plaque, no official notice on site tell anything about the other stories from the special children's residential home, Käthe Kollwitz. A place named, absurdly, after the socially and politically committed feminist and resistance artist Käthe Kollwitz.
Period: July to September 2022.
Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the program NEUSTART KULTUR.
