Protection (2025)
What we protect, why and how we do it differs according to perspective, place and time. The GRASSI Museum of Ethnography in Leipzig is currently dedicating a special room to the topic of protection. In our digital reader, we have brought together four authors who write about protection from very different perspectives.
Go to Digital ReaderSymbols on a Haik. Günter Eich, the Hundred Names of Allah and ‒ Me
Professor of Literature Roland Berbig finds a cloth decorated with Henna in the GRASSI museum. In his occupation with its label he encounters the 99 names of Allah and eventually the search for the 100th. That this quest has to do with labels is clear, but it is not written on the cloth. So where does protection come in?
The Law Should Serve to Protect People
What is to be protected is regulated by law in the state system. One person who knows this particularly well is professor and lawyer Edi Class, who explains in his text how law and protection are related to each other.
Subway Shirt
A subway shirt is a wide piece of clothing, which one puts on to protect from prying eyes that, which will only be revealed at the end of the subway journey as the outfit for the evening. In this way it serves to protect those who wear it from abuse or any sort of molestation. Author Anna Katharina Hahn delivers a rarely heard perspective on the phenomenon of the subway shirt: that of the subway shirt.
Under a Different Name
A name can protect - especially if it is fake. This has possibly been the case for as long as there have been names. A pseudonym not only provided protection from the wrath of provoked Cyclopes in ancient times, but also from official and political persecution to this day. In his article, literary scholar Jan Bürger examines the protective function of the pseudonym.
The Karlsruhe Sketchbook
What do the Friedrich-paintings Das Große Gehege (The Great Enclosure) (1832), Hünengrab im Schnee (Dolmen in the Snow) (1807), Abtei im Eichwald (Abbey in the Oak Wood) (1818), Frau vor der untergehenden Sonne (Woman in Front oft the Setting Sun) (1818) and Nordische Landschaft/Frühling (Northern Landscape/Spring) (1825) have in common? Correct, they all include motifs recorded by Caspar David Friedrich between April and June of 1804 in a booklet, which is called the "Karlsruhe Sketchbook" today. Here you can flip through it.
City in a Box
In the 18th and 19th centuries, illuminated views in peep-boxes were a fairground sensation with a special charm. The collection of the Museum für Sächsische Folkskunst includes a set of city views that were displayed in such boxes. Among the cities depicted is Dresden, including, of course, the Frauenkirche. As luck would have it, the managing director of the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Frauenkirche Dresden e.V. is a proven peep-box expert. In our short film, he talks about the magic of the peep boxes and their history.
Raiders of the Lost Mind - Mischief and Insubordination in GDR Puppet Shows
What declares itself to be nonsense declares itself to be harmless. Supposedly. Because the consequence of such self-determination is the famous jester's license, which a group of theater people in the GDR also claimed for themselves in the 1980s when they called themselves “Zinnober” and began making Punch and Judy shows for adults. Their play “Die Jäger des verlorenen Verstandes” (Raiders of the Lost Mind) can easily be read by the audience as a mockery of the GDR state system and its toleration is hard to believe in retrospect - but true.
