PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

The visual archives of the Nazi-Camps include SS photos and film footage, as well as those later produced by the Allies, but also the drawings, sketches and handicrafts produced by prisoners in the camps or after the war. My thesis focuses specifically on those drawings, made secretly by prisoners in the Ravensbrück and Neuen¬gamme Concentration Camps and also shortly after their survival/liberation. Microhistorical study of the prisoners' experiences in and their perspectives on the camps remains an important gap in the historiography of everyday-life in the camps. The visual perspective of the victims has to be considered as a serious and complex cluster of source material. These artefacts offer a wide range of subjective interpretations of social relations, diverse cultural practices and the everyday-life in the camps.

In my thesis, I analyze the different functions drawings had, e.g., their social, communicative, and mnemonic or memorial functions. Further, I discuss strategies, continuities, and changes in the visual narratives about different aspects of everyday-life in the camps. Finally, I shed light on selected processes of transmission and reception/perception of theses drawings after 1945: their use and re-uses in collections, exhibitions, and trials.