QL-Galerie
Esther Strauß
Oma war kein Nazi (Grandma Wasn’t a Nazi)

In her mid-twenties, artist Esther Strauß asked her grandmother if she had been a member of the Nazi party. Her grandmother, who had worked as a typist in the office of Hitler Youth district leader Otto Weber for two years, said no. After her grandmother’s death, Strauß found her membership card in the Federal Archives in Berlin. In the exhibition Oma war kein Nazi, the artist uses her grandmother’s example to explore the role of women as perpetrators, profiteers, and bystanders, as well as the role of their descendants.

What is the performativity of lies? What does it mean to grow up with them? What impact does confronting them have on the political present? At Leechgasse 24, Strauß’s investigation of her family encounters another piece of buried Nazi history. Research by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute initiated specifically for the exhibition has revealed that the building served as the Graz headquarters of the National Socialist Women’s League, whose local chapter has been scarcely studied to date.