Sibylle Bergemann: The Monument
Between 1975 and 1986, German photographer Sibylle Bergemann followed the development of the Marx and Engels monument in East Berlin. Conceived in the early years of the German Democratic Republic as a major state project, the commission was finally awarded in 1973 to sculptor Ludwig Engelhardt, who collaborated with a circle of fellow artists.
Bergemann began photographing the project independently, and in 1977 the Ministry of Culture made her involvement official. Over the next eleven years, she documented every step, from initial maquettes to the monument’s unveiling on April 4, 1986. While certain photographs appeared in the press from 1983 onward and were included in an official exhibition, it was only after the commission ended that Bergemann fully reclaimed the work as her own. From more than 400 rolls of film, she distilled a selection of twelve images under the title Das Denkmal (The Monument).
These stark, pared-down photographs depart radically from the triumphant rhetoric of official socialist realism. Seen today, their quiet irony and subtle dismantling of heroic imagery anticipate the collapse of an ideology—although the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 could not yet be imagined. Bergemann’s clear-eyed detachment enabled her to navigate censorship while producing an unsentimental portrait of political art in decline.
In 1990, a publication combining Bergemann’s photographs with texts by Heiner Müller cemented the series’ reputation as both an artistic milestone and a historical testimony. Today, The Monument stands as one of her most celebrated works and a defining visual record of its time.
Curator: Sonia Voss, Independent Curator
Production: Organized by the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in partnership with the Centre régional de la photographie Hauts-de-France (CRP) and with the participation of the Estate Sibylle Bergemann.
About the Author
Sibylle Bergemann (1941–2010) was born in Berlin and grew up in postwar Germany, later within the newly created GDR. Trained in office administration, she began working for Das Magazin in 1965, where she met photographer Arno Fischer, who introduced her to the medium and later became her husband.
From 1967 onward, her images appeared in the weekly Sonntag and subsequently in Sibylle, the East German fashion and culture magazine, where her distinctive style—at once rebellious and understatedly critical—shaped the magazine’s visual identity. Alongside fashion work, she created portraits and reportages, with Berlin itself, in all its changes before and after 1989, remaining one of her enduring subjects.
Her eleven-year documentation of the Marx and Engels monument produced her landmark series Das Denkmal. After co-founding the photography agency OSTKREUZ in 1990, she began working on international assignments for Stern, Geo, and The New York Times, which allowed her to travel widely. She was elected to the Berlin Academy of Arts in 1994.
Bergemann died in 2010 in Gransee, Germany, leaving behind an influential body of work that continues to shape the understanding of German photography in the second half of the twentieth century.
Sibylle Bergemann: The Monument
October 29, 2025 — January 11, 2026
Henri Cartier Bresson Foundation – Paris – France
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