An exhibition by Kai Ehlers
In Wyk on Föhr’s legendary harbour pub “Faith – Love – Hope” (1875–2010), affectionately called “At Aunt Herta’s” by its guests, almost 200 sailor’s souvenirs from around the world had come together in the course of its existence. Hung side by side, the regulars saw them as “wallpaper”, and they made the pub into a kind of wunderkammer.
With the suicide of the last owner Claus-Otto Menden (1953–2010), the son of the landlady Herta Menden (1920–1998), who gave the pub its name, the five-generation pub tradition came to an end. Before he went into the water on Christmas Eve, he appointed the German Maritime Search and Rescue Service as his sole heir. The inventory was liquidated and the house sold. Shortly before, the Berlin film-maker Kai Ehlers, together with the photographer Grischa Schmitz, took pictures of all the items and the rooms of the house and then held conversations with former customers.
The artistic exploration of this documentary material can be seen and heard in the three sections of the exhibition. The objects – in the form of after-images – stand out more prominently than they did as “wallpaper” in the pub. An image of the closed pub and the cleared-out flat are brought back to life again through the voices of former customers, who share their memories with us. In the end we arrive at the question of how we personally deal with the past and how this affects our future. How do we remember places, people and stories that disappear or die through the changing of times and technology as well as through other – also violent – circumstances? What is given to us, what do we take with us, what remains?
The Exhibition is sponsored by:
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