(UN)FREEDOM OF TRAVEL – WORKS BY ANNEMIRL BAUER

“What do walls and distances matter to the mind!” wrote Annemirl Bauer in a letter from the GDR to her aunt in West Germany in the mid-1980s. The artist, who was born in Jena in 1939, felt that travelling was essential in order to gather impressions of life in other countries, to sharpen her political world view and to develop her artistic work in an informed manner. Annemirl Bauer studied at Kunsthochschule Weißensee from 1960 to 1965 and graduated with a specialization on site-specific, construction related works. From the 1950s onwards, she travelled to France, Poland, Spain and the former Czechoslovakia, among other places. However, most of her travel wishes as an artist remained unfulfilled in the GDR and were rejected. Annemirl Bauer publicly protested against the ruling SED-party's restrictive border policy, which she described as the “violent confinement of an entire people”. In a so-called petition (Eingabe) in 1984, she demanded general freedom of travel for all GDR citizens:
“The independence of my thoughts and actions is hardly guaranteed anymore, due to a lifelong forcible confinement through non-information and isolation to an increasing extent. Therefore, I urgently demand free and unhindered entry and exit for me and my daughter and, secondly, a binding written program for the next 3 years that this self-evident right of free travel is made possible for all parts of the population during this time.”

As a consequence of her letter, the artist was expelled from the Association of Visual Artists (Verband Bildender Künstler, VBK) of the GDR, which equalled a prohibition to work. By this time, she had already been targeted by the Ministry of State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, “Stasi”) for a long time, and was sanctioned with repression. Besides her activism for the freedom of movements, this was also due to her criticizing the introduction of compulsory military service for women in the GDR as well as her solidarity with the imprisoned peace and women's rights activist Bärbel Bohley. The Stasi initiated “disintegration measures” (“Zersetzungsmaßnahmen”) against Bauer, which were intended to socially isolate her, and to destabilize her psychologically. Due to her commitment, Bauer is considered by scholars to be one of the “artists of the subcultural public sphere” who made an “active contribution [...] to the resistance and to the Peaceful Revolution of 1989” (Dvorakk 2022, p. 85).
The political injustices, the restrictions on freedom of travel, and the feeling of being locked up in the GDR are present in many of the artist's works. Walls, fences and bars are recurring motifs.

Annemirl Bauer expressed her situation in a self-portrait behind bars (“Der nackte Kaiser”, eng: „The nude emperor“, 1984). It shows her being surrounded by words reminiscent of an accusation in court: “Argument: petition without a personal concern is unconstitutional. She only wanted something personal: travel. Therefore excluded egoist! The slaughtered virgin.”
The title of the work refers to the fairy tale “The Emperor's New Clothes”, a parable of obedience and credulity. During a meeting of the VBK association on June 29, 1984, she defended her petition. Her speech has been preserved in the records: “My request concerns everyone. I feel like I'm in 'The Emperor's New Clothes'” (In meinem eigenen Lande 2012, p. 88), she said there.

Her work “Wartende”, (eng. “waiting woman”, 1985) shows a naked female body with a lowered head and a sad expression. The arms lie close to the body, brushstrokes of white paint run over the torso and legs like constricting ropes, so that the figure appears as a sick person, almost mummified. The painting is executed on a “discarded cupboard door”, as Bauer herself noted in the margin, together with the designation “Pathologized”. The artist has appropriated and used the door, its format and its materiality in multiple ways: Its narrow upright shape seems to literally squeeze the body, two metal fittings become nipples. At the same time, the door is a metaphor for a border situation, but as a “discarded” object it also alludes to the fact that Annemirl Bauer felt marginalized and stigmatised - condemned to wait for a chance to travel.

But just as she visualized her hopeless situation in the GDR, the world behind the Wall, which Bauer explored on her travels, also became an important subject of her art. This is particularly evident in her use of found materials. Clippings from newspapers and colourful magazines, stamps, timetables and maps, found objects from the beach - everything is combined, collaged, painted over and commented on with text. In Sosopol on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, where she repeatedly travelled, she captured portraits of the residents and impressions of the landscape in material collages with flotsam and jetsam. Not only did she process the fascinating colourfulness and lightness of her travel experiences, but also the intellectual stimuli and the intensity of self-assurance. This becomes evident in self-portraits and depictions of women she met along the way that Bauer created during and after her travels.

The connections between art, travel and the different living conditions of women probably preoccupied Bauer since childhood. Due to family links, she had a particularly close relationship with France, not least through the memory of her cosmopolitan grandmother Rosa Bauer, who had studied in Paris. In the 1950s and 60s, Annemirl Bauer travelled to the south of France several times, usually accompanied by her mother or friends. Her mother, Tina Bauer-Pezellen (1897 - 1979) was also an artist and had taken a critical stance on social issues during the Weimar Republic. After her work was ostracized as “degenerate” during National Socialism, she gained recognition in the GDR in the post-war period. Mother and daughter visited a distant relative in France who lived there in a Protestant congregation of sisters. Her encounter with the sisters of Pomeyrol made a lasting impression on the then 15-year-old Annemirl Bauer, especially her contact with the founder Antoinette Butte. As a member of the Eclaireuses, Butte was a key figure in Christian women's movements in the pre-war period, particularly the Girl Scouts, who were committed to the physical and spiritual empowerment of women and girls. Butte carried these values into her religious work.
Even after the construction of the Berlin Wall made traveling to Western Europe extremely difficult, Annemirl Bauer kept in touch with the sisters by letter. It was not until 1977 that she finally received permission to travel to France again. By feigning an illness, she managed to extend her stay to almost a whole month. Throughout her life, the religious community remained an important point of reference for Annemirl Bauer to discuss the function of art and gender roles, and to experience women living together. The sisters appear again and again in her works. On a Lufthansa newspaper advertisement, for example, which shows an airplane wing under glaring sunlight, she drew a nun figure and added the witty title “Predigende Frau in der Wüste” (eng. “Preaching Woman in the Desert”, 1987). She uses the biblical preacher in the desert, whose warnings are not heard, as a metaphor for wise women whose voices remain unheard.

In addition to the religious community, the special nature and atmosphere also attracted Annemirl Bauer to France. She described retrospectively in an interview: “The white light in the south of France and the dry air make things appear more direct and colours more intense, and to give them a tangible plasticity.” (In meinem eigenen Lande 2012, p. 108) Away from the landscapes, the artist was also fascinated by the vibrant urban life in Paris. In many letters to her daughter Amrei, she described her joy in experiencing the colourful, crowded city. Visiting Parisian museums was particularly important to her in order to intensify her engagement with original works of contemporary art. By looking at advertising and statues in the city, she moreover sharpened her critical view of representations of women and men.

Her first visit to Paris seemed like a dream to Bauer, she felt intoxicated by her impressions of the architecture, the people, the living environments completely different from the GDR. During her strolls through the city, she collected all kinds of material, brochures, admission tickets and magazines, in addition to countless jotted observations. She arranged her finds into collages with drawings and photographs. The feeling of dreamlike intoxication is particularly palpable in the collage “Ich in Paris/Begrüßung in Paris” (eng. “I in Paris/Welcome in Paris”), which she made after her last, hard-won trip to France in 1987: here Annemirl Bauer imagines herself in a hall full of people applauding enthusiastically. The image of an audience is taken from a French newspaper. She has torn open the paper so that her portrait photo appears behind it. Using ink, the artist has added a curly hairstyle with elaborate hair accessories, a flowing dress as well as chic heels, which appear at the bottom as if she were popping out from behind a curtain. She seems to float above the audience, with her arms spread wide and a broad smile on her face, enjoying the attention.

Another self-portrait, drawn on a map of Paris in delicate lines and bright colours, shows her framed by pin-up girls. At the bottom she wrote: “Sisters of all nations unite your spirit, your courage!” In many of her works, Annemirl Bauer commented on the role of women in the GDR, but also in other countries, criticizing for instance sexual violence or the invisibility of women in history books. Her artistic work is permeated by the question of her own position as a woman and artist in the patriarchal society that the GDR remained, despite the propagated equality of men and women under socialism.

In many of Bauer's works, monuments or buildings become phallic symbols. These depictions often seem humorous at a first glance, but they often also contain a painful truth. In „Männliche Architektur/Männliche Sicherheit“ (eng. “Male Architecture/Male Security”, 1987), for example, she visualizes the connections she sees between state institutions such as those of the security services, and architecture. Who shapes politics and the cityscape, and for whom are they intended?, the artist seems to ask. Who moves through the space in what ways, and who can feel safe in it? On a collage of brown paper with scattered newspaper clippings, a loose brushstroke outlines a body in black. Houses and towers on the newspaper clippings become male body parts. One of the eyes of this male figure is formed by a woman's head on a glued-on photograph. The woman appears in the background between the first secretary of the SED, Erich Honecker, and a uniformed functionary or soldier. The men shake hands past the woman, as if sealing an agreement.

During her travels, Annemirl Bauer also came into contact with publications by West German feminists. The magazine Emma became particularly important for Bauer's approach to feminist issues in her own art and art history. She even contacted Emma's editorial team in search of exchange and wrote: “I would like to write to you about how I came to a feminist stance [...] my temporary speechlessness, how I want to process feminist problems through art [...].” (Im eigenen Lande 2012, p. 80) In order to overcome this “speechlessness”, Annemirl Bauer studied the feminist linguistics of linguist Luise F. Pusch. Annemirl Bauer took up her thesis of German as a “men's language” in her many of works, for example in the form of wordplay. 

In 1987, Annemirl Bauer was able to travel for the last time following her readmission to the association the previous year thanks to the intercession of several fellow artists. In addition to France, she also travelled illegally to the Spanish island of Gran Canaria via some detours. Several drawings resulted from this trip. A recurring motif is palm groves behind walls, which she saw there and, not without humour, paralleled with the Berlin Wall in her drawings. On one of these sheets, a little man leaps effortlessly over the wall. A sash identifies him as an FDJ secretary, and he is carrying a “foreign currency suitcase” in his hand, emphasizing his privileged position.

Annemirl Bauer did not live to see the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. She had died of cancer in August. Bärbel Bohley later said in a documentary: “If I would have wished anyone to live to see the Wall open, it would have been Annemirl. Because she was so keen to travel [...]. She really was such a bird flying against the cage her whole life.”

The exhibition (UN)FREEDOM OF TRAVEL – WORKS BY ANNEMIRL BAUER // REISE(UN)FREIHEIT - WERKE VON ANNEMIRL BAUER was developed as part of the research project  "Affektive Archive - Auslandsreisen von Künstler:innen zur Zeit der DDR" (eng. Affective Archives – Artists' Travels Abroad during the GDR) at Technische Universitität Dresden by Prof. Dr. Kerstin Schankweiler, Jule Lagoda and Nora Kaschuba, in cooperation with Gwendolin Kremer (Kustodie der TU Dresden) and Amrei Bauer (Annemirl Bauer House and Archive / Niederwerbig).

Funded by Fritz Thyssen Stiftung.

Bibliography:

Elisaveta Dvorakk: Widerstand, Aktivismus und feministische Kunst der subkulturellen Öffentlichkeit der DDR. (Un-)Sichtbarkeiten – Desidentifizierungen – Visionen, in: Karin Aleksander et al.: Feministische Visionen vor und nach 1989. Geschlecht, Medien und Aktivismen in der DDR, BRD und im östlichen Europa, Opladen 2022, S. 83 – 111.

Kristina Volke (Hg.), In meinem eigenen Lande: die Malerin und Dissidentin Annemirl Bauer, Ausstellungskatalog Deutscher Bundestag, Berlin 2012.