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"Freedom in Word, Truth in Image"

Exhibition on Press Freedom in Moscow

Wechselausstellung

Georg Netzband, Goebbels, Drawing, 1939, Gerhard Schneider Collection

12.5.26

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12.6.26

The Museum Center for Persecuted Arts and the German Embassy Moscow present on the occasion of International Press Freedom Day the exhibition

"Freedom in Word, Truth in Image" – Press Freedom, Censorship, and Cultural Memory

May 12 - June 12, 2026
German Embassy in Moscow

‍‍Article 5 of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany protects freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of art. This strong wording is also a response to the experiences of Gleichschaltung (coordination), censorship, and persecution during National Socialism. Where these rights are curtailed, public discourse shrinks: debates become narrower, dissent becomes dangerous, and memory becomes manipulable.

On International Press Freedom Day, the Museum Center for Persecuted Arts, Solingen, and the German Embassy in Moscow present the exhibition "Freedom in Word, Truth in Image: Press Freedom, Censorship, and Cultural Memory." The exhibition is based on works, books, and documents from the museum's collections, which tell stories of lost, presumed lost, and long-overlooked artworks, life stories, and destinies. The exhibition demonstrates how closely press freedom, artistic freedom, and cultural memory are intertwined.

The exhibition traces a path from Heinrich Heine and his fight against censorship, through the book burning of 1933, to Carl von Ossietzky, whose life demonstrates the price journalistic independence can demand. At the same time, it focuses on the political power of images: George Grosz and Otto Pankok used art as a form of dissent, criticism, and visualization.

Another focus is on exile. Ernst Toller, Mascha Kaléko, and Claire Goll represent authors who asserted their language under conditions of flight, loss, and uprooting. Their texts show that literature can become a place of self-assertion – against silence, against forgetting, against annihilation. In 1938, Karl Schwesig used the humor of carnival to deliver biting criticism of the Nazi regime's dictatorship.

"Freedom in Word, Truth in Image" understands press freedom not merely as a media policy issue, but as a prerequisite for an open culture. For where words are controlled, images forbidden, and voices suppressed, society itself changes.

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"And yet it moves!" Free German Poetry. Anthology. London, "Freie Deutsche Jugend" Publishers 1943. Foreword by Oskar Kokoschka. Illustrated cardboard with dust jacket. The cover features a photomontage by John Heartfield. This militant anthology from exile includes contributions by Bertolt Brecht, Max Herrmann-Neiße, Johannes R. Becher, Erich Weinert, and Wieland Herzfelde, among others. The "Freie deutsche Jugend" fought against the violence of Nazi Germany, against intolerance, and for freedom of opinion. Photo: Jörg von Bruchhausen, Bürgerstiftung für verfolgte Künste – Else Lasker-Schüler-Zentrum – Kunstsammlung Gerhard Schneider

"And yet it moves!" Free German Poetry. Anthology. London, "Freie Deutsche Jugend" Publishers 1943. Foreword by Oskar Kokoschka. Illustrated cardboard with dust jacket. The cover features a photomontage by John Heartfield. This militant anthology from exile includes contributions by Bertolt Brecht, Max Herrmann-Neiße, Johannes R. Becher, Erich Weinert, and Wieland Herzfelde, among others. The "Freie deutsche Jugend" fought against the violence of Nazi Germany, against intolerance, and for freedom of opinion. Photo: Jörg von Bruchhausen, Bürgerstiftung für verfolgte Künste – Else Lasker-Schüler-Zentrum – Kunstsammlung Gerhard Schneider

Kurt Tucholsky, "Germany, Germany Above All," 1929, with illustrations by John Heartfield, Photo: Jörg von Bruchhausen, Bürgerstiftung für verfolgte Künste – Else Lasker-Schüler-Zentrum – Kunstsammlung Gerhard Schneider

Exhibition panel on Mascha Kaléko

Georg Netzband, Goebbels, Drawing, 1939, Gerhard Schneider Collection

Few could unmask censorship with such masterful humor as Heinrich Heine in "Ideas. The Book Le Grand" from 1827. – Photo: Daniela Tobias © Bürgerstiftung für verfolgte Künste – Else Lasker-Schüler-Zentrum – Kunstsammlung Gerhard Schneider

Exhibition panel on Karl Schwesig

"And yet it moves!" Free German Poetry. Anthology. London, "Freie Deutsche Jugend" Publishers 1943. Foreword by Oskar Kokoschka. Illustrated cardboard with dust jacket. The cover features a photomontage by John Heartfield. This militant anthology from exile includes contributions by Bertolt Brecht, Max Herrmann-Neiße, Johannes R. Becher, Erich Weinert, and Wieland Herzfelde, among others. The "Freie deutsche Jugend" fought against the violence of Nazi Germany, against intolerance, and for freedom of opinion. Photo: Jörg von Bruchhausen, Bürgerstiftung für verfolgte Künste – Else Lasker-Schüler-Zentrum – Kunstsammlung Gerhard Schneider

Georg Netzband, Goebbels, Drawing, 1939, Gerhard Schneider Collection

Kurt Tucholsky, "Germany, Germany Above All," 1929, with illustrations by John Heartfield, Photo: Jörg von Bruchhausen, Bürgerstiftung für verfolgte Künste – Else Lasker-Schüler-Zentrum – Kunstsammlung Gerhard Schneider

Few could unmask censorship with such masterful humor as Heinrich Heine in "Ideas. The Book Le Grand" from 1827. – Photo: Daniela Tobias © Bürgerstiftung für verfolgte Künste – Else Lasker-Schüler-Zentrum – Kunstsammlung Gerhard Schneider

Exhibition panel on Mascha Kaléko

Exhibition panel on Karl Schwesig

Material

Pressespiegel

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