Spurensuche. HELLERAU and the 90s

04.09. – 06.12.2025 

Alongside the ‘Transformation Forever’ focus, HELLERAU is also embarking on a search for traces of its own recent transformation history in autumn 2025. Immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall in early 1990, the Verein Europäische Werkstatt der Künste Hellerau (European Workshop of the Arts Hellerau association) was founded and initiated a series of pioneering dialogue series, art and discussion events even before the withdrawal of the Red Army in 1992, which significantly shaped the discourse not only in Dresden. In doing so, the association also laid the foundations for reclaiming the site of the Festspielhaus, which had been closed for so long, for the arts and culture and the general public from 1992 onwards.

The 1990s were formative years for the Festspielhaus Hellerau – characterised on the one hand by the many challenges of structuring the large Festspielhaus site, carrying out renovations and finding financing. But from the very beginning, this phase was also characterised by a newfound free spirit of connecting the arts between Eastern and Western Europe and the then as yet unnamed Global South. In various formats, from a thematic exhibition to lectures and talks to specially commissioned short performances, individual protagonists of that time and today will be questioned and formative events of that time will be illuminated and discussed. The individual events invite you to remember, discover, but above all – to join in the discussion.