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The interview with Paula Markert took place by phone early on a Wednesday afternoon. We decided to do things this way for scheduling and logistical reasons, because during the opening itself would not have been a good time for a 90-minute interview with an artist. We talked about the opening evening of Tell me about yesterday tomorrow.

What effect did the artists’ work have on visitors, and how do you view your work in relation to the permanent exhibition?

“The concept of the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism definitely worked out perfectly. Overall, I think adding art to the permanent exhibition as an additional commentary works really well. At first I wasn’t too sure about the color of the displays used for the exhibition, because the saturated blue really sets a certain tone. But the temporary intervention is now visually distinct, so it takes on a kind of separate role, commenting on the permanent exhibition. The blue thread makes it easier to find your way between the text, videos, and images in the permanent exhibition and the artistic commentary. I think the blue also works really well with my own work in aesthetic terms. Some people were saying it was the same blue the Bundestag uses, but I think that’s just speculation. In my work, the blue evokes associations with the color of government office furniture, so it fits very well.”

The project on exhibit, titled Eine Reise durch Deutschland. Die Mordserie des NSU, 2014-2017 (A Journey through Germany. The NSU Serial Murders, 2014–2017), combines inkjet prints, wallpaper and text elements on vinyl. The images do not document the court trial in itself, or government agencies such as the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, in Cologne, but rather also the environments in which the perpetrators and victims lived. What prompted you to tackle this subject?

“The very start of my work on a certain subject as an artist, at least for me, is that there’s something I can’t stop thinking about, and I would like to formulate questions more clearly for myself. Then, as I do research for a project, I try to find answers to my urgent questions. In late 2011, after the deaths of Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos, the right-wing extremist terrorist group NSU was unmasked. I was absolutely appalled at what came to light. In small steps, over several months, it became clear just how much even government agencies were entangled in that case in one way or another, how close the domestic intelligence service of the Federal Republic of Germany must have been to the three perpetrators, and how big their network was. The scope has become more and more unfolded, as was the processing in my consciousness. I started to delve even deeper into the subject in early 2013. When the trial was about to start, I had a few pressing questions: What kind of a country is this, where a right-wing terrorist network was able to commit racist murders for years and stay hidden? In what ways can the entanglement of the state itself and the failures of government agencies be addressed at all in a court trial?”
 

So you were thinking about the issue of what structures within the state were factors contributing to these acts by the NSU and their years of underground activities?

“Yes. The investigations by the authorities went in the wrong direction for years. Instead of investigating right-wing terrorism, the investigations focused on the victims’ own environment. Structural racism within law enforcement must have been a part of that as well. It made it clear that there must be a structural problem within society at large behind all this. Since I’m part of that society, I couldn’t stop thinking about it personally. I did a lot of research, a lot of reading, but it wasn’t enough to fight the feeling of powerlessness. The realization that mistakes were made on so many levels, consciously or unconsciously, and that there are so many potential sources of errors that it becomes impossible to reach any clarity really worried me. I mean, we’re seeing this now, years later! It’s 2020, and only now do we hear the German interior minister acknowledge “that right-wing extremism is the source of the biggest threat in our country,” that right-wing structures are present within law enforcement and we need to address them. The fact that so many things had to happen before people realized that this wasn’t an isolated issue, that was the feeling that formed the cornerstone for my work that is now on display at the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism.”

This is a highly multifaceted and complex topic. You spent years working on it and have even published a book of photographs, which also requires a lot of information. How exactly did you approach your research?

“I traveled through Germany with the goal of looking at the places where the perpetrators had lived, where they grew up. I visited the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, in Cologne, the places where the trial was held, but also some of the crime scenes to get a sense of the network, because it worked throughout Germany. These trips through Germany were really important to me as a way to take a closer look at the country I come from. What does a country like that look like, a country where the Holocaust was possible and where it becomes clear now, decades later, that there are structures that contribute to a series of murders as inconceivable as those committed by the NSU as a terror group? I wanted to see this country from a different perspective myself.”

The need to understand the structures and causes involved was what prompted Paula Markert’s photo analysis of the crimes committed by the NSU. The interplay of image and text elements creates a multidimensional way of approaching the subject, guiding the viewer through its complexities. Everyday places, contemporary witness accounts, and reports are arranged alongside each other, ultimately prompting new questions: What do I think about the events? What does this subject have to do with me?

By Isabel Sophie Oberländer, student of Art history at Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität Munich