2018-07-02 – BERLIN ROYAL – this is the new photo series by Andreas Bromba, following and alongside the successful photo concepts berlin minimal, “Mystical Series”, “Other Worlds”, and “City from Below”.
The first motifs of BERLIN ROYAL were created in August 2018. The series is continuously being expanded. The goal is a photo book and exhibitions. The first motifs were exhibited at Neue Art Dresden in January 2019.
The photographs show royal Prussian and imperial Berlin from a new perspective – without nostalgia or ignorance. The achievements of the architects and master builders, designers, sculptors, and craftsmen are honored. And, of course, viewers of the photographs are encouraged to see the queens and kings, emperors and generals of that time with a fresh perspective. For they tried, by the standards of their time and often in difficult periods, to do their best for the people entrusted to them, for science and the arts.
The National Socialists appropriated Prussia. An outrage, especially since the last Prussian Prime Minister, the gruff Social Democrat Otto Braun, resisted the Nazis with the full power of the Free State of Prussia. And he did so together with the civil service. Because they served the state in the Prussian sense – even the new, now democratic one. That was the German Reich of the Weimar Republic. Prussia was shattered under Nazi rule as an act of revenge. Only “Gaue” (districts) remained. Hitler, as an Austrian, hated Prussia. Who knows that today?
And the Allies, the supposed liberators? They disparaged Prussia and the German Empire in post-war historiography (before that, they were even partners and allies) and declared them precursors of the Third Reich. How convenient. Because that way they didn’t have to talk about land they had taken from the Germans. Not about old cities they needlessly bombed. Not about castles they plundered, nor about the expulsion of at least 12 million Germans from their homeland in East Germany and Eastern Europe. After all, it was the largest mass expulsion in European history.
So: Let Prussia speak for itself – without a glorified or grim look back.
Approximately 200 motifs exist so far.
