Public image-text reading (not only) on the graphic novel "The Scent of Pines. My family and its secrets" and panel discussion
as part of the interdisciplinary symposium "Practices of remembrance - Holocaust and National Socialism in the German classroom of the future" by Bianca Schaalburg (illustrator and author, Berlin)
In her graphic novel, Bianca Schaalburg delves into her childhood and comes up against the question of guilt and responsibility in a normal German family. What did her grandfather Heinrich, allegedly stationed in Riga as an accountant in the Wehrmacht, know about the Nazi atrocities? And why does the grandmother claim that she didn't know any Jews and had no idea about any of this - even though three Jews had previously lived in the house where the family lived for 40 years? Where were they expelled to? The artist embarks on a search for clues. She carefully but persistently lifts the veil that the family has spread over their role in the Third Reich.
Bianca Schaalburg was already drawing cartoons and illustrating her first children's books while studying visual communication at the Berlin University of the Arts. She works as an illustrator for publishers, editorial offices and agencies. In 2021, her family biography graphic novel debut Der Duft der Kiefern was published by avant-verlag. Her work on it was awarded various grants and prizes, including the German Youth Literature Prize in 2022. For the Ulm Einstein Museum, she drew a graphic memoir about a Jewish boy and his emigration to New York.
Moderation: Professor Dr. Dieter Wrobel
