From the Past - A Kreuzberg
Postcard Collection, 1890-1945

In 2023, the FHXB Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum received an extensive postcard collection. It comes from the estate of Peter Plewka and includes over 5,000 postcards featuring Kreuzberg motifs from approximately 1900 to 1945. Most of the postcards are picture postcards—with a printed image on the back and an address/text field on the front. They depict Kreuzberg streets, squares, businesses, and everyday scenes.

The collection raises questions about collection and exhibition practices. What image of Kreuzberg emerges when viewing historical postcards in the present? What do the motifs show—what do they omit? Which images and gaps form in our minds? Which practices of depicting, documenting, and arranging are made evident by the collection?

The website explores these questions. It comprises two sections: On one hand, the digital exhibition allows a thematic approach to the Plewka collection. The individual stations exemplify how historical postcards can be handled today, which perspectives and themes are visible and which are invisible in the collection. On the other hand, this website provides access to all the postcards in the entire Plewka collection. Here, it is possible to search the collection by keywords, street names, and time periods. We encourage you to ask further questions about the collection, to research the collection yourself, and to repeatedly question, reorganize, and thus continually describe and contextualize the past.