Unheard - The history of women. Flight, expulsion, integration

The exhibition

The exhibition "Unheard - The story of women. Flight, Expulsion, Integration" describes flight, expulsion and integration from a female perspective. The focus of the presentation is on the individual stories and fates of six contemporary witnesses from different regions of Eastern Europe. In the second part of the exhibition, their biographies are placed in the wider context of German and European history from 1933 to 1945.

The current exhibition opens up a view of the experiences and challenges faced by women during their flight, expulsion and integration after the Second World War. In doing so, it ventures into a terrain that has been little recognized by the general public and historical research to this day. She addresses topics such as women's involvement in political parties, their gender-specific integration strategies and new female career patterns and gender roles. She shows which spaces for action and participation in politics and society, the economy and culture opened up for women refugees and displaced persons after 1945, to what extent the fate of flight and displacement sensitized them to women's rights issues and what opportunities arose for women's emancipation from the economic and social border situation after the end of the war and later, in the years of the "economic miracle". She also examines the psychological and social consequences of sexualized violence to which many women were exposed during their flight and expulsion. Finally, she takes a look at the generation that experienced it as well as that of their children and grandchildren and asks about the transgenerational significance of the collective and individual trauma of forced migration.

Top female politicians from West German political parties and exceptional women from the cultural scene are featured in the exhibition, as are their "invisible" contemporaries who coped with everyday life in their families or cultural life in the associations for displaced persons.

Opening

The exhibition will open on Thursday, May 15, 2025, at 19:00. It will be on display at the Museum Bayerisches Vogtland until September 21, 2025.

Speakers will be: Mayor Angela Bier, City of Hof Christian Joachim from the Association of Expellees, Hof District Association Patron Dr. Petra Loibl, Bavarian State Government Commissioner for Expellees and ExpelleesPatricia Erkenberg from the House of the German East

The evening will be hosted by the acting museum director Miriam Rautenberg.