living at risk
Queer people 1933-1945
The travelling exhibition “living at risk” shows the diverse and ambivalent life stories of queer people during the Nazi era from 1933 to 1945. It is currently touring Germany. On this page you can find out exactly what the exhibition is about and you can find all the dates. You can visit the exhibition virtually or click through the picture gallery and the accompanying booklet to the exhibition.
The exhibition can be viewed free of charge in the auditorium of the Kunstsammlungen am Theaterplatz from August 12 to September 14, 2025.
During the commemoration of the victims of National Socialism on 27 January 2023 in the German Bundestag, attention for the first time was on the queer victims. The historical documentary exhibition “endangered living. Queer people 1933-1945” picked up from this important signal of remembrance and made the subject of exclusion and persecution of queer people in the years 1933 – 1945 available to a wide audience.
The diverse and ambivalent life stories of queer people in the period from 1933 to 1945 are traced in the exhibition using documents, graphics, photographs and quotes. This includes previously unpublished material. The exhibition offers both a broad overview and deeper insights into the biographies of the people as well as current research results.
The exhibition makes it clear how the lives of many queer people were broken and destroyed. At the same time, it sheds light on how the remaining scope for action was used in everyday life. The exhibition does not just tell stories of persecution, but also ways of asserting oneself in an adverse reality.
Visitors encounter five subject islands in the exhibition
- Scale and significance of the destruction of queer infrastructures
- Exclusion from the “national community” and persecution practices
- Self-assertion and stubbornness
- Reasons for arrest and arrest locations (prisons, concentration camps and so-called social welfare institutions)
- Post-1945: victims with reservations, continued persecution and emancipatory and lifeworld room for manoeuvre
The exhibition information texts are available in German and digitally also in English via QR codes.
