First issue of a four-part series of publications dedicated to the history of Fluentum’s building in Berlin Dahlem. The series will form the first comprehensive treatment examining the site.

Each publication has a thematic focus, such as the critical analysis of the building’s National Socialist architecture, the influence of the U.S. Allies in Germany and West Berlin in particular, as well as cultural memory and film. In this context, they reveal historical breaks as well as continuities up to the present.

In Medias Res #1: Histories Read Across interrogates the methods of historical research and the production of knowledge through a critical engagement with sources and their corresponding narratives. The focus lies on the historical development of the Fluentum exhibition space building in Berlin-Dahlem, covering the period from the construction and use of the building as “Luftgaukommando III” during the Nazi era to the escalation of the Cold War between the US military stationed in Berlin and neighboring Soviet forces. Multiple, richly illustrated spreads present an extensive body of archival material, some of it previously unpublished, that weaves together intersecting narratives that show how discourses, documents and locales, past and present intertwine. The history of Fluentum’s exhibition space serves as a starting point for scholars from the fields of architectural and art history, as well as political, economic, and military history, who elaborated on events and figures in short profiles for In Medias Res #1: Histories Read Across. Contributions addressing questions relating to art and curatorial practices and the relationship between politics, aesthetics, and knowledge broaden the methodological variety of the research.

Contributions by Noah Barker, Lutz Budrass, Dennis Brzek and Junia Thiede, Stefanie Eisenhuth, Max Eulitz, Forum Democratic Culture and Contemporary Art (Fabian Bechtle and Leon Kahane), Petra Kind, Grit Lederer, Dorothea Schöne, Anne Sudrow