Su Goldfish 26.03.2009
BALMORAL MELDET
Einladung zu einer Präsention der Künstlerin Su Goldfish
am 26. März 2009 um 19.30 Uhr
Das Künstlerhaus Schloß Balmoral und der Förderverein Balmoral 03 e.V. laden Sie und Ihre Freunde herzlich ein, der Künstlerin Su Goldfish aus Australien auf den Spuren ihrer jüdischen Vorfahren in Bad Ems zu folgen.
Als einziges Erbe erhielt sie von ihrem inzwischen verstorbenen Vater ein Essbesteck des Hotels Löwenstein, das damals der Familie gehörte, sowie ein leeres Fotoalbum.
Anhand der noch existierenden Fotografien rekonstruiert sie nicht nur den Lebensweg ihres Vaters, sondern erforscht auch die Bedeutung von Erinnerung und Geschichte für unsere heutige Gesellschaft.
Der Vortrag wird in englischer Sprache gehalten und simultan übersetzt.
Anschließend gemütliches Beisammensein mit der Künstlerin.
Originaltext von Su Goldfish:
My father Manfred Goldfisch was born in Bad Ems in 1911. His parents, Eugen and Lina Goldfisch, my grandparents, ran a kosher hotel in Bad Ems. Hotel Löwenstein, it overlooks the river below, on Lahnstr. 22.
My father was arrested in November 1938. His first wife though terrified and distressed went to the SS, begging them to let him go. They would leave Germany immediately, she promised. Amazingly he was released. Without visas and desperate to leave, the shipping company could give them only one option - they could go to Trinidad in the West Indies.
It was the beginning of an amazing journey and it was on this island that I was born. In the seventies, after an attempted military coup and the rise of the politics of black power my family moved to Australia.
Growing up I knew nothing of my father's background but as a teenager I got more and more inquisitive about his past. I didn't know he was German or Jewish. He no longer believed in religion or nation states. He always used to say, “I'm a citizen of the world”. He had drawn a line when I was born and decided to not look back. He wanted to lead a happy life and protect me from the despair of the past.
Now I am trying to undo the secrets and understand the silences – the choice my father made when faced with trauma and terrible loss. I have been to Germany before but never to the South West where his family came from. It is an amazing journey of discovery and along the way I meet wonderful people who help me find the traces of these lost lives.
I feel like a ghost detective. I have been documenting this personal journey, investigating the role of memorials in the present and the way we remember our histories, trying to understand how, seventies years later, how this particular history that I am connected to still ricochets around in the present. As I come to Germany, Israel is bombing Gaza, the pope is forgiving a Holocaust denying priest and Neo Nazis demonstrate their new hates in Germany.
I am currently working on a number of projects around these personal stories and their resonance in our world today. These include a documentary film with Australian director Kathy Drayton, and a series of “presentations with pictures”. I am working with my father's old black and white photographs, an empty photo album, 8mm film footage from Trinidad, a few stories and a knife and fork that have the name Hotel Löwenstein engraved on the back.
I will discuss and present some of these projects and I am looking forward to any feedback people may have.
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