Dachau 1965: Metaphorical Exhibition Making at the Memorial Site/ Martin Schmidl

This text is part of a larger research project on the visual results, the concepts and the debates behind exhibition making in Dachau from 1945 until the latest redesign finished in 2003. Exhibition making in Dachau is a worthwhile and complex field of study because of continuous debate on how the history of the concentration camp should be visually represented on site. Here, the interplay of political and creative considerations can be seen as an indicator of how the remembrance of Nazi crimes is dealt with in Germany. My focus in this article is about the exhibition that was set up during the creation of the Dachau memorial site in 1965. It was shown until 2002 and had, by that time, been visited by more than twenty-five million people. The year 1965 constitutes a clear break in the design history of the Dachau exhibitions because it was the first time that the exhibition was not created by survivors but commissioned from a professional designer. I will examine the occasion that gave rise to this commission and the exhibition that resulted before exploring historical prototypes for its concept and its reception, using literary texts as well as contemporary press material. I will comment on the relationship between the 1965 exhibition and its successor(s). Following a period of reconfiguration of all the main Nazi-crime memorial sites in Germany, today a discussion on its future design has already begun.