September 30, 2022 ― March 5, 2023 | Foyer | Free entrance

Radio Free Europe. Voices from Munich during the Cold War

An exhibition at the Münchner Stadtmuseum's Galerie Einwand extending to the foyer of Munich's Jewish Museum

The Exhibition
"Radio Free Europe. Voices from Munich during the Cold War" is an exhibition that tracks the eventful lives of five people who worked for the radio and provides an insight into what it was like to work for "Radio Free Europe" and "Radio Liberty". Its multifaceted accounts of the lives of these people both in front of the microphone and behind the scenes allow us to see the two radio stations from different perspectives, from their beginnings in the 1950s right through to the 1990s.

During the Cold War, these stations broadcast news, culture, and sports programs in over 20 Eastern European languages from their headquarters in Munich. They were funded by the CIA until the 1970s to provide alternative information to the communist countries of Eastern Europe, which did not have free media.

This Einwand Gallery exhibition with a module at the Jewish Museum Munich features video interviews with contemporary witnesses whose lives were variously bound up with "Radio Free Europe". Photos and documents paint a picture of how they had initially found their way to Munich and what their work for the radio stations during the Cold War entailed. Graphic novels capture key moments in their lives, showing how their lives in post-war Munich were shaped by a struggle for a sense of belonging, loyalty, love, and recognition.

The period spent in Munich by RFE editor and the well-known literary scholar Peter Demetz, born in Prague in 1922, forms the focus of the module at the Jewish Museum Munich. Four other biographies are to be presented in the Einwand Gallery of the the Münchner Stadtmuseum (Tue–Sun, 2pm–6 pm).

Curators
Dr. Hannah Maischein (Münchner Stadtmuseum) und Jutta Fleckenstein (Jüdisches Museum München)
Exhibition design and graphics
UnDesignUnit, Sarah Dorkenwald and Karianne Fogelberg 

Coming soon
"Radio Free Europe. Voices from Munich during the Cold War" forms part of "The Post-War Period and Migration in Munich", an exhibition and collection project jointly promoted by the Münchner Stadtmuseum and the Jewish Museum Munich. In 2023, we plan to follow it up with two exhibitions featuring displaced persons who ended up in Munich because of the Second World War.

Download the Exhibition Leaflet