Art and society in Italy and Germany: anti-fascism or post-fascism?

Maria Neumann in conversation with Claudia C. Gatzka

In the series Vergiftete Verhältnisse - Gespräche zur Gegenwartskunst, Claudia C. Gatzka and Maria Neumann will talk about art and society in Italy and Germany in the year of the first documenta 1955 on June 14 at 6 pm at the research station on Lutherplatz.

documenta 1955 did not take place in a vacuum. It took place at a specific time, in a specific place and was made possible and shaped by specific actors: So in what context did the Kassel art exhibition emerge and establish itself? What image did the exhibition organizers have of their recent past, what interpretations did they draw on and where did they locate themselves in their present? Finally, what significance did concepts such as democracy or freedom, which are still closely associated with documenta today, have for post-war society and to what extent are they themselves subject to change?

Claudia C. Gatzka completed her doctorate at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Her award-winning dissertation entitled “The Democracy of Voters. Urban Society and Political Communication in Italy and the Federal Republic of Germany” was published in 2019. Since 2015, she has been working as a research assistant/academic councillor a.Z. with Jörn Leonhard at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. In 2020, she co-edited the book “Schleichend an die Macht. How the New Right instrumentalizes history”. She is currently conducting research, funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, on political representations of the “people” in the Federal Republic of Germany after 1945.

Maria Neumann studied history, political science and economics in Berlin, Potsdam and Wrocław. She worked at the Humboldt University in Berlin as a research assistant at the Chair of 20th Century European History, where she wrote her thesis on “Die Religion der Anderen. Religious Socialization and the Cold War in Divided Berlin-Brandenburg, 1945-1990”. She has been a research associate at the documenta Institute since 2021.