Cities have been reduced to rubble and more than half of the population are where they do not belong or do not want to be. How can a functioning society ever emerge from this chaos?
In bombed-out Berlin, Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, journalist warms herself by a makeshift stove and records in her diary how a frenzy of expectation and industriousness grips the city.
The philosopher Hannah Arendt returns to the country she fled to find a population gripped by a manic loquaciousness, but faces a deafening wall of silence at the mention of the Holocaust.
Aftermath is a nuanced panorama of a nation undergoing monumental change. 1945 to 1955 was a raw, wild decade poised between two eras that proved decisive for Germany’s future. Featuring black and white photographs and posters from post-war Germany, some beautiful, some revelatory, some shocking,
Aftermath evokes an immersive portrait of a society corrupted and freed at the same time