Barlach Reloaded

Multimedia Museum

Present and future need remembrance. Ernst Barlach's life and work offer a multi-layered level of reflection for this. The Ernst Barlach Society Hamburg takes the 150th anniversary of the artist's birth as an opportunity to re-examine the political, cultural, work and life-historical events of this period. The starting point for this project is the Ernst Barlach Museum Ratzeburg, home of the artist in his youth and museum since 1956. An interactive and multimedia exhibition concept invites visitors to rethink Barlach and his art in terms of sustainable values, social and ecological perspectives, options for securing peace and shaping social transformation processes. An experience for young and old: Here history comes alive and art becomes a dialogue. A special museum experience: rediscover Barlach!

Barlach on stage

An entire floor in the Ernst Barlach Museum Ratzeburg is dedicated to Barlach's theater world, which hardly anyone knows. Here you can immerse yourself in large-scale stage sets of the most important German theaters from 1920 onwards and find yourself in individual stage scenes via augmented reality experience. The highlight here is also a virtual reality 3D installation: Using an Oculus Quest headset, you can experience yourself in the middle of a staged production of Barlach's first play THE DEAD DAY, either as an observer or as a participant.

Experience history

The artist is a contemporary witness. The Ernst Barlach Museum Ratzeburg brings history to life and shows the life and work of Ernst Barlach in a historical context: A digital timeline invites us to explore the political, cultural, work and life history events. We can playfully call up the pictures, films, documents from 150 years, which are hidden in a 5.60 meter long touchscreen area. We experience the historical structures and collective memories on which our present is built. The Barlach Game designed for this purpose makes historical experience come alive and activates our awareness of time.

Barlach App

The Barlach App is interactive and you can use it in the museum on your smartphone. It leads you through different questions with image, text and sound associations to a personal encounter with the artworks.

Art in context

In the Ernst Barlach Museum Ratzeburg, the works of Ernst Barlach do not remain in a historically preserved state. Poetic films on the themes of "Man and Nature" as well as "Man and the World" connect Barlach's works of art with our current questions as a spatial installation, inviting us to reflect on causes and perspectives. Documentary films on Barlach the writer and on the influence of his home town Ratzeburg inform about astonishing and so far largely unnoticed aspects of his life and work.

© Photos Nicolas Döring

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