Between destruction and hope
The Oderland and Berlin in
the spring of 1945 – Photographs
by Valery Faminsky
It is a story that reads like a thriller – photographs of the Oderland and Berlin taken during the last days of the war in 1945 that shouldn't actually exist were rediscovered in Russia after decades and rescued by the Ukrainian photographer Arthur Bondar and a newly formed Berlin publishing house.
The Soviet photographer Valery Faminsky (1914 – 1993) was charged by the Red Army's medical corps with documenting the way field hospitals operated at the front. As a member of the 1st Belorussian front under the command of Marshal Zhukov, he experienced the Battle of the Seelow Heights from 16 to 19 April and the breakthrough towards the capital, the Battle of Berlin and Germany's surrender on 8 May. However, he documented far more with his camera than merely the situation in the field hospitals. Unvarnished and without any kind of propaganda or pathos, these photographs bear witness to the first days of peace, but also to the destitution and destruction in the Oderbruch region and Berlin. Faminsky should have handed in these images to the Soviet archives, which would undoubtedly have meant the loss of this material – after all, only photos suitable for propaganda purposes were wanted. However, he secretly kept the negatives.
Bondar discovered the negatives in 2016, realised that these images were priceless and acquired them. A book showing Faminsky's photographs was published in cooperation with Ana Druga and Thomas Gust from the publishing house and gallery Buchkunst Berlin. To mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Seelow Heights as well as the end of the war, the Stiftung Schloss Neuhardenberg foundation is now showing the photographs Faminsky took in the spring of 1945 in a cabinet exhibition.
On 5 April, Arthur Bondar will also tell the story of how he discovered the archive and more about its unusual past in detail during an interview that includes a guided tour of the exhibition in Neuhardenberg.
