On 2 October 1990, shortly before the celebrations for German reunification, the closure of VEB Pentacon in Dresden was unexpectedly announced. This decision not only put an end to a traditional and internationally important camera production facility. More than four thousand employees of VEB Pentacon had to reorient themselves. The Dresden Technology Collections and the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Research (HAIT) want to shed light on their experiences in and with the transformation in a joint project with filmmaker Theo Thiesmeier (Berlin). The life stories of contemporary witnesses from different levels and production areas of VEB Pentacon will be documented in film interviews conducted by students at TU Dresden. The interviews complement the exhibition of the Technology Collections under the title »Long-term Exposure« and will be scientifically analysed in the research field »Transformation Research« at the HAIT. They will also be made available for academic use on the Oral-History.Digital portal.
Biographical conversations
Our aim is to record biographical interviews with various actors from the different areas and hierarchical levels of the former company. Accompanied by HAIT historians, important aspects of transformation research (company liquidation, unemployment, identity crises) and the gender issue will be given special consideration, as the previous tradition was almost exclusively male-dominated. Our aim is to work out the contrasts between the individual experience of success in the attempts to catch up with the latest technological developments in photographic technology in the 1980s and the increasingly disastrous working conditions. These are life history interviews - i.e. the participants themselves largely determine the content and the course of events and report on their lives.
The focus is also on the dramatic biographical upheavals, the closure of the Dresden photography and cinema industry in 1990, the difficult and sometimes unsuccessful attempts at reorientation and the transformation processes up until late in the 1990s. The scientific and practical support provided by the HAIT, the realisation of the life story narratives in an aesthetically successful and emotionally gripping film form should pave the way for further uses.
Special exhibition
»Bis zum bitteren Ende«
Interviews und Geschichten zur Dresdner Fotoindustrie um 1989
22. Okt 23 — 25. Feb 24
Storytelling café in the Ernemannturm
Since December 2022, the Technology Collections have been organising regular storytelling cafés in the Ernemannturm on Schandauer Straße. The project group would like to talk to other contemporary witnesses, explain their concerns and invite them to participate. Numerous former employees of the former VEB Pentacon have accepted these invitations so far and have talked about their work as engineers, assembly line workers, in management, in the machine turning shop or in the office and brought along memorabilia.
For some, it was a reunion after many years, but many met for the first time, and some had kept in touch with each other since 1990. They had their say, with both fond and unpleasant memories. There was a great deal of shared interest in the different experiences of the former colleagues and how they now look back on their time at VEB Pentacon and its sudden end.