Sophie von Hellermann | Permanent Installation | Schloss Freienwalde

Schloss Freienwalde
Rathenaustraße 3
16259 Bad Freienwalde

In 1909, the Weimar statesman and aesthete Walther Rathenau acquired and restored the Prussian royal palace at Bad Freienwalde outside of Berlin. Rathenau's assassination by far-right extremists in 1922 rendered him a martyred icon of German democracy. At the time of his murder, he was Germany's first and only Jewish Foreign Minister.

Today, Schloss Freienwalde is a museum dedicated to the life of Rathenau. To mark 100 years since his assassination, urKultur and Oxford University's Jewish Country Houses Project have commissioned a new site-specific artwork in the Schloss by painter Sophie von Hellermann. Using her characteristic loose and lively brushstrokes, von Hellermann painted both on canvases and directly onto the walls bringing some of the lost spirit back to the Schloss. Extant archival photographs, taken by Nazi forces, detail the Schloss interior during Rathenau's lifetime. Starting from these images, von Hellermann's work alludes to the life once lived there by Rathenau and towards a possible future. The installation is open to the public starting June 25.

For more information, please visit Oxford University's Jewish Country Houses' website.