Buchenwald

Between 2017 and 2024, the Leipzig-based photographer Christian Rothe (born 1986) explored the vast area of the former concentration camp Buchenwald on the Ettersberg near Weimar, using his analog large-format camera. Ruins, barely discernible foundations, stairs, fences and paths appear as topographical scars and signs in the impenetrable thicket. What began as a careful and tentative exploration gradually evolved into an intensive search for traces of history obscured by nature. The black and white photographs are complemented by literary excerpts from internationally renowned novels of former concentration camp inmates: Bruno Apitz’s Naked Among Wolves, Imre Kertész’s Fatelessness and Jorge Semprún’s What a Beautiful Sunday. Essays by curator Andrea Karle, Chairman of the World Council of Churches, Heinrich Bedford-Strohm and editor Günter Jeschonnek on Christian Rothe’s visual language, the significance of contemporary remembrance culture and commemoration complement the examination of the rupture of civilisation and the terror of National Socialism in the immediate vicinity of the town of classicism and great German poets and thinkers. The book marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp by the US Army on 11 April 1945.