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ZERHEILT: HEALED TO PIECES – The Subjects Pose with Their Portraits

Photos from the Exhibition Opening and Interviews about Jewish Life in Berlin

The exhibition Frédéric Brenner – ZERHEILT: HEALED TO PIECES opened on 2 September 2021. In his new photographic essay, the photographer explored Berlin as the stage for a vast spectrum of expressions and performances of Jewishness, portraying landscapes and individuals. At the opening event, we had a chance to meet some of the portrait subjects and to photograph them standing in front of their portraits. We also asked them about their lives in Berlin and their hopes for Jews’ future in the city. The notion of “Jewish life in Berlin” is itself a construct and often describes a fantasy on the part of people outside the community. With that in mind, the multiplicity of portraits and responses to our questions may help to shift some of those ingrained ideas.

  • A man in a suit stands sideways next to a painting in the exhibition and looks with folded arms at the portrait of himself in the rows of seats of the Comic Opera House Berlin

    Ofer Waldman, freelance journalist and writer; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jule Roehr

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  • Nina, Dekel & Ronja Peretz, Fraenkelufer Synagogue; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jule Roehr

  • Judith Kessler in front of her portrait in the exhibition ZERHEILT: HEALED TO PIECES, next to her part of a window of the Libeskind building

    Judith Kessler, social scientist, editor, and writer; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jule Roehr

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  • Twin sisters in blue and red blouse in the exhibition ZERHEILT in front of a portrait of them in their studio

    Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov, visual artists; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jule Roehr

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  • A man in a suit with a kippah stands next to a portrait of himself on display; on the portrait on the wall he is cut in half: one half wears a beard and shtreimel, one half is shaved and bald.

    Akiva Weingarten, founder and President of the Besht Yeshiva in Dresden, the Rabbi of the Jewish community of Dresden and Rabbi of Migwan, the Liberal Jewish Congregation in Basel, Switzerland; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jule Roehr

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  • Barbara Steiner stands next to her large-format portrait in the exhibition, in the portrait she is sitting on a picnic blanket in a meadow

    Barbara Steiner, therapist; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jule Roehr

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  • A smiling couple, both gray-haired, she all in black, he in a white suit and straw hat stands next to a portrait of them in the exhibition, in the portrait they are standing behind a table looking in different directions

    Sonia Simmenauer-Pazzini, woman, mother and grandmother, concert agent and salonière & Karl-Josef Pazzini, psychoanalyst; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jule Roehr

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  • A woman in blouse and brown jacket stands in the exhibition in front of her portrait taken in a kitchen

    Dr. Irene Runge, b. 1942 in New York, NY. Moved to East Berlin (GDR) in 1949; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jule Roehr

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  • A woman and a man stand in front of a large-format photograph in the exhibition room, in which they can be seen in front of a brightly painted shed

    Tal Alon, founder and editor of SPITZ, Hebrew Magazine in Berlin, and head of division at the German-Israeli Future Forum Foundation & Olaf Kühnemann, artist; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jule Roehr

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  • An elderly woman with large earrings and her hands in her pockets stands in front of a portrait painting of herself sitting in a chair in a room with many empty frames on the walls

    Lea Rosh, television journalist, author, and chair of the Society to Support the Monument for the Murdered Jews of Europe; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jule Roehr

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  • A blonde woman in a denim dress stands in the exhibition next to a photograph of herself and her partner sitting at the breakfast table, in the background two paintings on the wall

    Sarah Nemtsov, freelance composer; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jule Roehr

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  • An elder man with a pocket square in a jacket stands in front of a large format photo of a salon where a painting of a woman hangs on the wall, where the head would be, a piece of canvas is cut out

    Olaf Lemke, one of Europe’s five biggest frame dealers; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jule Roehr

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  • A young man with a baseball cap, beard and hands in his pockets stands in front of a portrait of himself, where he, also with a baseball cap and hands in his pockets, stands in front of a large mountain of paper scraps between green trees

    Max Czollek, writer from Berlin; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jule Roehr

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  • A man in a suit holds an open book into the camera, in the book is a portrait of him

    Rabbi Walter Homolka, Professor of Jewish Theology at the University of Potsdam and Rector of the Abraham Geiger Kolleg; photo: Tobias Barniske

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  • A man in a suit and bow tie stands smiling in an exhibition in front of a portrait of himself on the wall with his eyes closed and his hands resting at his sides

    Daniel Schönpflug, historian at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jule Roehr

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  • Ein Mann mit Bart und Brille steht in einer Fotoausstellung und hält einen aufgeschlagenen Katalog mit einem Bild von sich in der Hand

    Pavel Feinstein, painter; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jule Roehr

  • Selfie of woman with glasses in front of large print of her portrait, lamp is seen in background

    Christina von Braun, film­maker and writer, co-founder and the founding director of the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg; photo: Christina von Braun

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During the exhibition period until March 2022, more photos and interviews will be published here regularly. So drop by more often if you like!

Citation recommendation:

Jewish Museum Berlin (2021), ZERHEILT: HEALED TO PIECES – The Subjects Pose with Their Portraits. Photos from the Exhibition Opening and Interviews about Jewish Life in Berlin.
URL: www.jmberlin.de/en/node/8369

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At a Glance…

 Person alone on one of the red seats in the auditorium of an empty theater, head resting in hands

Frédéric Brenner – ZERHEILT: HEALED TO PIECES

Photo exhibition

Exhibition
3 Sep 2021 to 13 Mar 2022

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Pavel Feinstein (Artist)

 Photography of woman in blue summer dress sitting on the ground in the forest and grabbing her hair above her forehead

Without the leaves, I would not have started.

Frédéric Brenner about his new photographic essay, ZERHEILT: HEALED TO PIECES, and Jewish life in Berlin

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 Gray book cover with the title ZERHEILT and a banderole with a photo of a person sitting alone in the red audience seats of a theater

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Accompanying publication to the homonymous exhibition

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 Students in a Talmud class look at texts or at each other while a white dove flies in the foreground of the picture

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Oct 2021 to Mar 2022