Stadthaus Ulm Münsterplatz 50 89073 Ulm Allemagne
Germans in America
The Germans represent the largest demographic group to have emigrated to the land of unlimited opportunities: every third US citizen has at least one German ancestor. Between 1608 and the present day, eight million Germans have left their home country in search of freedom, better working conditions, and a higher standard of living.
German emigration to the US continues to the present day--yet the reasons for it in the age of globalization differ from those when emigration began four hundred years ago. The Berlin photographer Gunter Klötzer visited over one hundred and twenty German emigrants to the US who had been born and raised in Germany, took pictures of them, and asked them about their reasons for leaving their home country. The essence of his project has been distilled into forty interviews that allow for highly personal glimpses of individual lives--accounts often fluctuate between rejection of and admiration for the new country. At the same time, they provide a revealing picture of the "Land of the Free" caught up between the American Dream, 9/11, the Iraq War, and an increasingly emancipated Europe.
Sixty-three brilliant portrait photos accompany the interviews to depict the German emigrants in their own personal American environments: taking stock of their situation.
Not just an exhilarating exhibition, this show is in an equally stimulating setting at the Ulm Stadthaus designed by the New York architect Richard Meier: a fascinating contemporary documentary on German-American relations in the early 21st century.
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication of the same title:
256 pages, 63 portraits,
40 interviews in German and English
from Arnoldsche Art Publishers,
ISBN 978-3-89790-023-3,
EUR 39.80