Ludwig Rauch
©2025 Ludwig Rauch
Imprint















Let's go back to a distant land, a bygone era.” This sentence begins the text that Petra Göllnitz wrote for the catalog that accompanies the exhibition she curated: “Der große Schwof. Celebrating parties in the East” in Jena. The distant country is the GDR, the time is the 1980s. “People like to party carefree. The music is loud, the food sumptuous, the alcohol plentiful, the sex carefree.” And the pictures were taken by the country's most renowned photographers. 

This exhibition will also be on display at the Kunsthalle Rostock from June 2024. More than 300 photographs by 31 artists will be on display. Six of them are self-taught, the others studied in Leipzig at the Academy of Visual Arts (HGB). Seven have left the GDR. None of them have an unbroken biography. Not all of them received the appreciation they deserved after reunification.








Der Große Schwof



2025

Kunstsammlung Neubrandenburg
2024

Kunsthalle Rostock

Brandenburgisches Landesmuseum für moderne Kunst



2023

Kunstsammlung Jena



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Cafe Nord















1987 – 1988
The Cafe Nord was one of the trendy discotheques in East Berlin.