eighty years later, in september 2019, my mother and i leave the cinema after watching the film werk ohne autor. loosely based on the life of artist gerhard richter, the film shows how his beloved aunt is taken away during the nazi regime, sent to a psychiatric institution, and later killed under the pretext of jugendwahn, a so-called gnadentod (mercy death). these practices were part of the infamous aktion t4 program (1939 –1941), in which thousands of people with mental or physical disability deemed nicht lebenswert (unworthy of life) were murdered.while discussing the film, something suddenly clicks for my mother. she remembers the unexplained deaths of two of her mother’s cousins, two brothers, likely homosexual, who were probably killed as part of this same program. this realization set something in motion. it planted the seed for my current project.
at first, i thought i had found a unique theme: injustice within my own family history, where sexual orientation also played a role. but as my research unfolded, i discovered there was more beneath the surface. my search wasn’t about them, it became about me, too. about shame. about growing up as the daughter of a german mother who came to the netherlands after the war, and about navigating life between two worlds.
in the netherlands, my mother was often made to feel unwelcome. as a child, i heard other kids on the street call her een mof (a kraut), while at school i was surroun-ded by classmates whose families had suffered deeply under nazi germany. i always tried to defend her heritage, yet at the same time, i pushed her german identity away. it felt safer to create distance. without realizing it, i gave her less space to be herself.
now i understand how deeply this unspoken shame is rooted in both of us. with this project, i explore how these feelings are passed down, using a dialogue between my mother and me as its core. how does the experience of a seven-year-old girl ripple through time to shape the life of another seven-year-old girl, decades later?
annaleen louwes