Location

• 10115 Berlin Robert-Koch-Platz 10 , Germany
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Languages

• German

Website

• https://archiv.adk.de/bigobjekt/8426

Provenance and cultural activities

• Starting from the 1970s, Gino Hahnemann was active in the alternative milieu of the GDR as an author, photographer, set designer and filmmaker. He was one of the most prolific Super-8 filmmakers within the alternative film milieu of the GDR. Artists such as Gabriele Stötzer or Cornelia Schleime were greatly influenced by his films. By concealed means, Hahnemann took part in various international festivals in West Berlin, The Hague and New York in the 1980s.
  
  Even though he was only nominally interested in politics, as an author he is seen as part of the ‚Prenzlauer-Berg-Connection’ (Adolf Endler).  
  

  He was open concerning his belonging to the LGBT communities, wrote poetry and prose and is considered to be one of the first GDR writers who openly dealt with homosexuality in his works. In the 1980s his poetry and prose appeared in underground magazines like „Schaden“, “Entwerter/Oder”, “U.S.W.”, der „Ariadnefabrik“ and many more.
  
  During the same time Hahnemann experimented with and sought to test the boundaries of Super-8 filming. He filmed his own scripts as an independent director. According to the historian Claus Löser, without Hahnemann’s contributions, the independent film scene in the GDR would have developed much differently. As film-maker, he was also part of the “underground” and showed his own, independent view of the GDR-reality with his movies.
  
  The German literature scholar Peter Böthig wrote: “The visual artist Gino Hahnemann thinks and works in a multi-dimensional, physical, visual way. The strengths of his texts are in emphasizing physicality, where encounters, emotions and the ambivalence of desire come together in a cool, at times self-reflexive, language. This language is full of energy, rough, brutal and associative. Gino Hahnemann’s texts, which transgress borders of genres and bodies, do not follow generic patterns. Poems can become films, essays – screenplays. This blurring of borders is part of the project of social and literary self-liberation.”

  After 1990, Gino Hahnemann remained an active artist. He died in 2006. The Academy of Arts acquired his private and artistic estates two years later and added it to their existing collection.

Description of content

• The collection demonstrates Gino Hahnemann’s artistic prowess in its entirety. Alongside private documents, it also contains materials relating to his work in film, screenplays, and plays, drafts of set scenery, event programs, posters and prose including lyrical texts preserved in self-published artist’s books. In total, these materials comprise four meters and span the period from 1939-2006.

Content

• manuscripts (ego-documents, diaries, notes, letters, drafts, etc.): 1000-
• memorabilia (posters, flyers, stamps, etc.): 10-99
• photos: 1000-
• publications (books, newspapers, articles, press clippings): 10-99
• video recordings (including oral history recordings): 100-499

Operator(s)

• Academy of Arts in Berlin

Owner(s)

• Academy of Arts in Berlin
• Hahnemann, Gino

Geographical scope of recent operation

• national

Topics

• alternative lifestyles and resistance of the everydays
• literature and literary criticism
• samizdat and tamizdat
• underground culture

Founder(s)

• Hahnemann, Gino

Date of founding

• 2008

Place of founding

• Berlin, Germany
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Creator(s) of content

• Hahnemann, Gino

Collector(s)

• Hahnemann, Gino

Important events in the history of the collection

• Gino Hahnemann working days, 2008

Featured items

• Artist’s book: 'Gino Textra'
• Documenation about Gino Hahnemann's alternative film production

Access type

• parts are closed to the public

Publications

• Hahnemann, Gino, Helge, Leiberg (illustrations). Allegorie gegen die vorschnelle Mehrheit (Allegory against premature majority), Berlin: Edition Galrev,1991.
  
  Hahnemann, Gino; Jahn, Sabine (illustrations). Das Verschwinden gekrümmter Flächen in einer Ebene. (The Dissapearance of crooked areas in a plane). Berlin : Galerie auf Zeit, 1997.
  
  Hahnemann, Gino. Sizilien schweigt. (Sicily remains silent). Berlin: Dr.-Haus Galrev, 1997
  

Author(s) of this page

• Sonnenberg, Uwe

References

Löser, Claus. Strategien der Verweigerung : Untersuchungen zum politisch-ästhetischen Gestus unangepasster filmischer Artikulationen in der Spätphase der DDR (Strategies of denial: Research on the political-aesthetic gesture of alternative film productions in late GDR), Berlin: DEFA Stiftung, 2011.

Galek, Franziska , interview by Sonnenberg, Uwe, January 09, 2017. COURAGE Registry Oral History Collection