Motion Comics als Erinnerungsarbeit

Motion Comics as Memory Work

Motion Comics als
Erinnerungsarbeit

MoCom?

MoCom: Motion Comics as Memory Work is a project by and for young people in West and East Germany with and without experiences of migration. Until the end of 2023, four motion comics will be produced within the MoCom project. Each of the four groups of young people will focus on one main topic: border crossings, fleeing and departure, shared history/shared stories, arriving in a foreign land.

What will happen?

The participants collect materials and memories about experiences with the inner-German border – and other borders that still have an influence on the lives of many people in Germany today. After discussing photos, interviews, drawings, and objects, they collectively develop a narrative. Together they write the manuscript for their own motion comic. Their ideas are conceptually and visually realized by professional artists. The participants are involved in the visual and acoustic design of the motion comics, and in close dialogue with the artists throughout the entire production process.  

The MoCom project is an online project, so that young people from all over Germany can participate. Each group regularly exchanges ideas online via video conferences. At the beginning, each group meets for a weekend workshop at the Marienborn Memorial to Divided Germany, near Helmstedt. The participants will present their final motion comics in public online screenings and share their results on social networks.

Who are we?

Lisa Hölscher works at the Gedenkstätte Deutsche Teilung Marienborn as project coordinator for the MoCom project. With regular online meetings, she accompanies and assists the participants intensively in the process of memory work and the production of each Motion Comic. In doing so, she incorporates her experience as a visual anthropologist and intercultural trainer.
Lisa Hölscher
Lisa HölscherProject Coordinator
Felix Ludwig is acting director of the Marienborn Memorial to Divided Germany. As such, he assists the Mocom-Team with problems and questions about the history of the German division and provides support for the kick-off-workshops in Marienborn.
Felix Ludwig
Felix LudwigActing Director of the Marienborn Memorial to Divided Germany
Historian Anja Werner specializes in Diversity History with a focus on the 19th and 20th centuries. Among other things, she does research on the possibilities of digital and inclusive Public History from the perspectives of above all people of African descent and d/Deaf people in the transatlantic triangle.
Dr. habil. Anja Werner
Dr. habil. Anja WernerConcept and Project Advice
Sarah Fichtner is a social anthropologist and education researcher who works at the FiBS – Research Institute for the Economics of Education and Social Affairs in Berlin, Germany. As the former project coordinator of the activist “encounter” network and inspired by her participation in the project “Re-connect/ Re-collect: Crossing the Divides through Memories of Cold War Childhoods”, Sarah Fichtner became interested in collective and artistic biography and memory work as a means for transcultural learning.
Dr. Sarah Fichtner
Dr. Sarah FichtnerConcept and Project Advice
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MoCom is organized and supported by the Sachsen-Anhalt Memorials Foundation/ Marienborn Memorial to Divided Germany. Dr. Anja Werner (historian) and Dr. Sarah Fichtner (social anthropologist) conceived and developed the MoCom project. The Marienborn Memorial to Divided Germany works with the Institute of Didactics of Democracy (IDD) of the Leibniz University of Hanover as a cooperation partner. As part of the Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Eastern Germany’s program “Jugend erinnert”, the project is funded by the Federal Government Commissioners.

Why motion comics?

Motion comics are digital, moving image stories with text and sound. This project aims to make greater use of their potential for historical-political educational work. Each motion comic will be published with some accompanying material. Both will be used for educational work at schools and memorial sites.

The project creates approaches to get young people from very different cultural backgrounds interested in recent German history through engaging in a creative debate and pointing out parallels. At the same time, young people are also the intended audience for motion comics, which are an ideal form of low-barrier knowledge transfer via Internet platforms and social media.

The idea for the MoCom project originated in 2020 with the motion comic “Ghost Train”. In this work, Sarah Fichtner and Anja Werner use the perspectives of two children to recount memories of ghost trains and ghost stations in East and West Berlin. “Ghost Trains” was illustrated by the artists Azam Aghalouie and Hassan Tavakoli.

Marienborn Memorial to Divided Germany

The Helmstedt/Marienborn border crossing is one of the most distinctive commemorative sites of German division. Situated at the meeting point between East and West, the GDR border crossing site (GÜSt) Marienborn developed into the largest and most important border crossing on the inner German border. The emblematic architecture of large roofs and rows of lamp posts on the grounds of the control area reflects the heavily monitored border between two political systems that not only separated Germans from Germans, but also divided all of Europe and the world into two opposing power blocs.

The Marienborn Memorial to Divided Germany opened on the grounds of this unusual historic site on 13 August 1996. It is a place to commemorate those who lost their homes, experienced suffering or injustice, or were killed as a consequence of the GDR border regime.