Culture Wednesday - Museum Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind

Meeting point: 13:30 in front of Sprachenatelier
Duration: as long as you want
Costs: none

The permanent exhibition in the museum tells the moving story of the Blind Workshop of Otto Weidt at its authentic location – the courtyard of Rosenthaler Straße 39. During World War II, the small-scale entrepreneur Otto Weidt primarily employed blind and deaf Jews in his brush workshop.

The workshop often served as the last refuge for persecuted workers and their families. Otto Weidt procured food and false papers for the brush makers threatened with deportation. In 1942, he succeeded in bribing the Gestapo to bring back the workers picked up from the collection camp in Große Hamburger Straße.

Weidt hid several people in the workshop's preserved back room and assisted an employee in escaping during evacuation marches from the Christianstadt concentration camp. The exhibition portrays the poignant picture of a life constantly threatened by persecution and deportation through personal documents such as letters, poems, and photographs.