Culture in the Oder-Spree Lake District

Under Trees by the Lake

Once a refuge for the writer Bertolt Brecht and the actress Helene Weigel - today a museum with a garden, library and events. Brecht had chosen the place in Buckow as his summer residence since 1952 and wrote his last cycle of poems, the "Buckow Elegies", here in 1953. After Brecht's death in 1956, Helene Weigel continued to invite many guests here and used the property alongside her Berlin apartment for relaxation until her death in 1971. 

The Brecht-Weigel House in Buckow (Märkische Schweiz) has been a memorial to the artist couple since 1977. The museum shows the originally furnished living room, the lyrical exhibition in the garden, the exhibition on “Mother Courage” with the original props from the first performance in Berlin, as well as changing special exhibitions in the historic villa and the newly built visitor center on the museum grounds. 

Since 1998, the Literature Museum has organized readings, song afternoons, concerts, talks, discussions, films and exhibitions every year. The library of the Brecht-Weigel House contains more than 800 books about B. Brecht and H. Weigel and the living hall can also be rented for weddings.

Events & More

The Gustav Seitz Museum, idyllically located in the historic Trebnitz Castle estate, offers not only art enjoyment, but also numerous opportunities for relaxation and recreation. Combine your museum visit with a trip to the village shop and café, a leisurely stroll in the castle park or a break in the museum garden, where sculptures by Gustav Seitz are on display.

A special highlight is the audio guide, which can be accessed via your smartphone. The voice of the well-known songwriter Rolf Zuckowski guides you through the museum and the grounds - surprises included!

Our tip! Stay in one of the 4-star apartments in the guest house right next to the museum.

Learn more

And what happened to the horses? In June 1808, Heinrich von Kleist published the first version of a now world-famous story that tells the story of one of the "most righteous and at the same time most horrific people of his time": Michael Kohlhaas, who, after being abandoned by the justice system, takes revenge for the mistreatment of his horses using his own means and burns down entire towns in the process. But how can the text be understood today? Is the horse dealer a criminal, a troublemaker or just a man striving for justice? Answers to these questions can be found from October 8th in the Kleist Museum in Frankfurt an der Oder. 

In the special exhibition "Experiments", Brandenburg's largest literature museum is searching for clues and trying out completely new ways of exhibiting the written word. The show is looking for answers, experimenting with the narrative, but also with the museum itself, using installations, objects and AI. It invites visitors to immerse themselves in the text, to discuss or argue about it, to continue writing and experiencing it themselves. Not only in the special exhibition, but also at the numerous accompanying events, the public has the opportunity to get to the bottom of the story and its author and to get involved: a reading workshop (October 11th), an experimental afternoon for children (October 12th), stencil printing (October 13th), an indoor picnic (October 25th), readings in Polish and Ukrainian (November 15th), a film evening (November 22nd), guided tours in various languages ​​and much more will be offered until February 23rd, 2025.

But what happened to the horses in the end? Find out for yourself!

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The Museum of Utopia and Everyday Life combines the Documentation Center for Everyday Culture of the GDR in Eisenhüttenstadt and the Beeskow Art Archive. With 170.000 objects of everyday culture and 18.500 works of fine and applied art as well as amateur work, it preserves an extraordinary collection of the cultural history of the GDR in terms of its scope and composition.

SPECIAL EXHIBITION - PURE Visions. Plastic furniture between East and West 3.8.24 - 30.03.25 

The “Garden Egg” and the “Kangaroo Chair” are now considered icons of East German design. These pieces of seating were made from the plastic polyurethane (PUR) but were part of an exciting transfer story between West and East.

After the Second World War, plastics paved the way for an age of supposedly limitless consumption. Mass-produced, inexpensive and in almost any color and shape, they spurred product design and industrial production. While private industry drove their spread in the Western world, in the countries of state socialism it was politics. There was an unstoppable boom in promising synthetic materials worldwide.

In accordance with the maxim "Chemistry gives bread, prosperity and beauty", the GDR set the course for "plastics and elastics" in everyday life around 1960. But despite high investments, it found it difficult to keep up with western innovations. In the middle of the decade, polyurethane appeared on the horizon, made ready for the market by the West German Bayer Group. It penetrated new areas of application such as furniture construction. The "Panton Chair" made from a single piece was a spectacular demonstration of this. West German designers such as Ernst Moeckl and Peter Ghyczy also celebrated the attitude to life of the POP era, freed from conventions, with flowing shapes and intense colors.

Excited by the possibility of producing furniture on a large scale from plastic instead of wood, the GDR bought machines and designs for the production of PUR furniture from the Federal Republic in the early 1970s. It was soon producing more plastic furniture made of polyurethane than any other country in the world. These were presented as a sign of socialist progress, without mentioning the West German origins. In addition, East German designers at universities and in companies came up with their own creative designs for furniture made of PUR, although some of these were never implemented.

The exhibition looks at PUR furniture production up to the early 1980s and shows, alongside photos, advertisements and film excerpts, numerous iconic and previously little-known examples of furniture - designed in the Federal Republic and the GDR. It looks at design history and economic policy aspects and asks about the future handling of the difficult-to-recycle material polyurethane.
 

around the museum