This Audio walk tells the story of former Bauhaus student Franz Ehrlich in the Buchenwald concentration camp. It takes you through the Buchenwald Memorial and consists of seven stations that you can walk through one after the other.
Franz Ehrlich (1907-1984) made a career for himself in the early years of the GDR. He designed the “Rundfunkhaus Nalepastrasse” in Berlin, which, until 1990, was the headquarters of the State Broadcasting service of the GDR and is now a popular destination. His furniture series “602”, designed for Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau, was a great success and is considered a classic of “Ost-Moderne” (“Eastern Modernism”) today. Franz Ehrlich’s career as an architect began at Bauhaus in Dessau. However, Ehrlich is relevant not only because of the high quality of his design work, but above all because of his complex life trajectory, in which the central conflicts and catastrophes of the 20th century are symptomatically reflected. After the National Socialists came to power, he became part of the anti-fascist resistance and in 1937 was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp as a political prisoner. During his imprisonment, he designed, among other things, the well-known lettering “Jedem das Seine” (“To Each His Own”) on the gate of the camp. After his release in 1939, he worked as an architect for the major paramilitary Nazi organization SS (or “Schutzstaffel”).
An audio walk by Jens-Uwe Fischer, narrated by Kimberly Bradley (EN) and Ralf Schlüter (DE), translation: Sylee Gore, sound: Steven Hofmann; thanks to: Ulrike Bestgen, Friedrich von Borries, Alex Govoni, Ronald Hirte, Ingolf Seidel, Nora Sternfeld, Carla Streckwall, Lotte Thaa, and Jens-Christian Wagner.
