"Education Through Work" at the Cottbus Human Rights Center: Making GDR Injustice Visible
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When a label determined a life: GDR injustices at the Cottbus Human Rights Center
The traveling exhibition "Education Through Work. 'Asocials' as Enemies of the State in the GDR" brings to light a long-suppressed chapter of GDR history. At the Cottbus Human Rights Center, visitors encounter individual life paths, historical documents, and filmic testimonies about exclusion, discipline, and criminalization.
Fourteen biographies against forgetting
At the center of the exhibition are fourteen portraits of women and men who could be persecuted under the so-called Asocial Paragraph 249 of the GDR Criminal Code. Perceived reluctance to work, an unconventional lifestyle, prostitution, a political stance, or an application for exit were enough to stigmatize people by the state. A derogatory label became an instrument of social control.
Documents, photographs, and moving contemporary history
The curation combines photographs, historical documents, film footage, as well as interviews with contemporary witnesses and experts. Documents become traces of personal fates, images become testimonies of institutional power, and the voices of those affected become an important counter-archive. The aesthetic experience of this presentation arises not from decorative art, but from the urgent contemplation of historical evidence.
Paragraph 249 as a tool of state repression
The exhibition places the so-called Asocial Paragraph in a larger historical context. It addresses predecessors in the German Empire, National Socialism, and early GDR, as well as ideological reference points in Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. According to the Federal Archives, approximately 146,000 people were convicted under Paragraph 249 between 1969 and 1989, many of them to imprisonment.
An authentic place of remembrance
The Cottbus Human Rights Center and the Cottbus Prison Memorial lend the exhibition a special exhibition atmosphere. The historical architecture creates a resonance space for questions of human dignity, political persecution, and social exclusion. Cultural education is combined here with historical research and a direct confrontation with GDR injustices.
Conclusion: An exhibition that demands attitude
"Education Through Work" expects art and history enthusiasts with a factually precise, emotionally impactful presentation. The exhibition gives names and stories back to those affected and sharpens the view for the consequences of state attributions. Anyone looking for a culture of remembrance, political education, and an intense aesthetic experience at a historical site should visit this exhibition live.
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