Mönchengladbach Research Trip

Back at the start of December, as part of our current Arts Council England project, Iris and I undertook a research trip to Mönchengladbach, Germany, the hometown of Lisel Haas, which was documented by filmmaker John Akinde. We were hoping that the trip would help fill in some gaps in our research, as despite Lisel having lived in Mönchengladbach* for 40 years, not much of her life in Germany was known, as there is very little trace of it in the archive at the Library of Birmingham. 

In many ways, this research trip was more of a pilgrimage for myself and Iris. We both connect quite personally to Lisel’s story, and with our projects we really want to honour her and her legacy. To be able to visit her hometown was a real privilege.

For me, the project dates back to early 2020. I first learnt about Lisel Haas during the final year of my undergraduate History of Art degree, after being asked by my tutor, Dr Jutta Vinzent, to give a presentation on Haas for a module on exiled and displaced artists. I was amazed to discover that a queer, émigré photographer lived in Birmingham, and that a large archival collection of her work was stored at the Library of Birmingham. This collection was, however, uncatalogued and barely any research had been done on Haas. The story really resonated with me, not only because my academic research interest is in queer art histories and particularly photographic histories, but because my great grandmother was also German and emigrated to the UK in the same year as Lisel. Delving into this history has allowed me to explore and develop a greater understanding of what it means to be an émigré, and what life may have been like for my great grandmother and her family. 

I joined Bertz Associates as an intern in 2021 on Iris and Simone Word Smith’s ‘Words and Walks: Women between the Lines’ project, and brought the Lisel Haas story with me. They too were both shocked that, despite there being such a rich archive of her life and work, very few people in Birmingham knew of Lisel. We knew that a big project needed to be done, and I am honoured to be working on this project now.

We really couldn’t have asked for our research trip to Mönchengladbach to have gone any better. We met with some amazing people who were incredibly generous in giving us their time and sharing their knowledge. I’m really grateful and very excited for the future possibilities that have come from this trip, and hope to make it back to Mönchengladbach in the future! 

*Mönchengladbach is a small city in the North Rhine-Westphalia state, near Düsseldorf and not far from the Dutch border. It was traditionally a textiles manufacturing town, and is/was occasionally referred to as the ‘Rheinisch Manchester’ for its industry. 

Our meeting today was with Irina Weischedel, Chief Officer of Artist Support and Fundraising for the Mönchengladbach Culture Bureau. It was fascinating to learn from Irina just how different the funding landscape for the arts is in Germany in comparison to England - her very job role demonstrates the massive difference as local authorities in England simply do not have artist support as an inbuilt part of the council. ‘Artist’ is a much more formalised title in Germany, as artists have to register themselves (though there is still an outsider art scene of people who have not formally registered themselves as artists). Generally, it seems that the arts in Germany are more well funded by the government (if you are well established). Additionally, community engagement is not part of the picture. In the UK today, nearly all arts projects need to have a community engagement aspect in order to satisfy funder requirements (I do not say this as a negative - I believe strongly that the arts should involve local communities and meet their needs). I am not knowledgeable enough of the cultural sector in Germany to suggest whether the funding landscape there is better for artists but it certainly seems that, at present, the arts are understood as vital and important in a way that they aren’t in the UK.

Wednesday 3 December

In the morning, we met with Kathrin Tillmans, Photographer and Professor at University of Düsseldorf. We were honoured to be welcomed into her home, a gorgeous townhouse with stunning wood panelling inside. Kathrin has worked on several archival photographic projects, and was able to discuss with us the funding landscape from her perspective. She proposed developing a research project with the University of Düsseldorf. As there is currently only one full academic study on Lisel Haas, and it is a study written from a heteronormative viewpoint which dismisses the relationship between Lisel and Grete Bermbach, we are very keen for more academic research to be conducted. 

Kathrin and Iris spent time reminiscing about what it was like to grow up in East Germany. Kathrin is currently working on a project reviewing the Stasi records on a family member. Despite this family member being just an ordinary person, because he was British whenever he visited East Germany he was closely followed by Stasi agents and all his movements documented. It was interesting to see some of these documents, and to learn more about this period of German history from people who lived it. At school I learnt a bit about the division of Germany after the war and the restrictions in place, but while you can learn dates and read from a textbook, you gain a much richer understanding of the history by listening to those who experienced it. 

I still can’t quite get my head around how our next meeting came to be. About two weeks before our trip, Iris somehow discovered that a book called ‘Frauen und Mönchengladbach’ about the forgotten women of the city was due to be released, and it contained a chapter about Lisel! Not only that, but the book launch was taking place while we were visiting! Talk about fate. So Iris quickly got in touch with the author of the chapter on Lisel, Rita Mielke, who kindly invited us to the book launch and asked if we would like to meet. We met at Cafe Kontor where the launch would be taking place the following evening and was, coincidentally again, situated on the same square as the Haas family home. Rita is a journalist and writer who champions forgotten women’s history. She shared that Lisel is almost entirely unknown in Mönchengladbach as most of the interesting material is in Birmingham. She stumbled across the Lisel Haas story several years ago through the Krüners, a couple whose family had worked in the leather industry and owned photographs taken by Lisel which took them down a research rabbithole. Since then, Rita has been involved with several projects where Lisel’s story has been championed. We shared the yet unpublished discoveries we have found, and she kindly shared her research notes in return. Iris and Rita discussed a recent trend in Germany of novels about women in history, true stories written as historical fiction, sort of like a docudrama - a potential avenue for us to tell Lisel’s story in future. 

That evening, we met with Queers an der Niers, the local LGBTQ+ community centre. This meeting was a real highlight for me. Heike, Kurt, Birgit, Günther and Udo were incredibly welcoming. The centre is a lovely spot, right off the high street, and hosts many events for the local queer community. It was an honour to bring Lisel and Grete’s story to the group. Heike shared that growing up, she often wondered if there were other women like her and didn’t really know of any lesbians in Mönchengladbach’s history, and so was amazed to have people coming all the way from Birmingham to bring this story. We discussed how in the only full academic study done on Lisel, her and Grete’s relationship was erased despite their obvious relationship and relatively open partnership. The group expressed disappointment in this, but also voiced that it wasn’t surprising. Kurt suggested that perhaps the author of that study was heterosexual and so simply could not imagine homosexual life. I agreed that that was how the study read - the author acknowledges that Lisel lived with a woman her whole life, but cannot bring themself to fully accept that they were in a relationship. We laughed at how obvious it was, Grete left her family and life behind in Germany to join Lisel in the UK - that is not the action of someone who is ‘just a friend’. 

The group shared what life is like for LGBTQ+ people in Mönchengladbach. They shared that, unfortunately, it is a very conservative area, and the community faces harassment, though the local mayor (which is a much more politically influential office than our ceremonial mayors in the UK) is gay and supportive of the community. There is a general attitude from heterosexual people that queerness is ‘fine’, so long as it isn’t ‘shoved in their faces’. But, what that really means is that a gay person existing and being openly in a gay relationship can be interpreted as pushing queerness. One scene on a tv show depicting a kiss between a queer couple can cause an uproar, even though kisses between straight couples are depicted far more often. It’s a similar attitude in the UK, with heterosexuality as the standard norm and anything outside of that is considered to be/thought of as a deviant oddity. It is especially a shame that this is the current case in Germany, as prior to the Nazi’s gaining power, the LGBTQ+ community thrived, especially in large cities like Berlin. We discussed how it is often forgotten, or simply not mentioned, that gay and trans people were persecuted under the Nazis. Indeed, the first Nazi book burning was that of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexology, an organisation which championed LGBTQ+ rights and provided some of the first gender affirming care to trans people. 

I was really touched with how open and welcoming Heike, Kurt, Birgit, Günther and Udo were. I felt instantly at home with them, and though we couldn’t all speak the same language, we had a shared identity which instantly created shared understanding. We spoke about the importance of found family for queer people - the notion that your biological family is not the only family you have, but that queer people get to choose their family. I think it is this queer concept of the found family that was the framework for the discussion that night. 

While in the meeting, he told us that we absolutely must meet with Prof. Dr. Ralf Georg Czapla, a historian currently working on the boheme in Mönchengladbach who might be able to tell us more about the local art scene that Lisel and Grete lived in. Yilmaz gave Ralf a call and fortunately he wasn’t too far and had an hour to spare so came to meet with us! He shared that the bohemian community was small, many didn’t survive the war or left and never returned (as in the case of Lisel and Grete). But it did exist, just without connections to larger artistic cities like Berlin. We were very grateful that Ralf made the time to meet with us and share his research.

Final Reflections

I’m so incredibly grateful to have been able to do this research trip to Mönchengladbach. The amazing materials in the Stadtarchiv have filled in many of the gaps in our research. I cannot get over how welcomed we were by the people we met and spoke with, and how willing they were to collaborate and share knowledge. I’m really excited about where we go from here, and the many potential collaborations we can develop moving forward. Right now though, time to focus on our Lisel Haas exhibition and book, coming in July! 

This research trip was supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Interested in the Lisel Haas project? Other recommended reading:

Lisel Haas Online Sharing, published 2025

Researching Lisel Haas in the Birmingham Archives blog by Franziska Eggers, published 2025

Researching the Photographer Lisel Haas blog by me, published 2021 (our recent research means that some of this article is now out of date, I am working on writing an updated version!)  

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