Fruchtstrasse, Berlin, 27th March, 1952

Annett Gröschner, Arwed Messmer, Fritz Tiedemann

On 27 March, 1952, Fritz Tiedemann photographed Fruchtstrasse in Berlin between Ostbahnhof and Stalinallee for the municipal government of East Berlin. He documented the condition of the buildings in the form of a façade elevations seven years after the end of the war and two decades before they were torn down. This is the source material for Arwed Messmer and Annett Gröschner’s photographic-literary project addressing the documentary facets of photography. Arwed Messmer’s digital editing and enlargement of the thirty-two individual images to 125 by 2000 cm creates a walk-through portrait of a street. The panorama is supplemented by the archival documents that have been passed down as well as the research notations of the writer Annett Gröschner. Her text Heute prima rote Rüben: Die Fruchtstraße am 27. März (Today Tasty Beetroots: Fruchtstrasse on 27th March) tells the story of the buildings and their occupants, who were mostly stranded migrants from East and West Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania, and for a short time China too. The exhibition takes place at the original site of one of the buildings, Franz-Mehring-Platz 1.