110 Years Later, the Perpetrator Becomes the Host

 

Germany’s role in the Armenian Genocide is rarely treated as a central chapter in the country’s reckoning with its past. Even the path to recognizing the Genocide in 2016, shortly after its 90th anniversary, was not straightforward. Public memory has focused far more on the genocide of the Herero and Nama in Namibia, the Holocaust, and Germany’s steadfast support for Israel despite its genocide in Gaza. Germany was not only an ally of the Ottomans during World War I; the alliance was intrinsic to facilitating the Armenian Genocide. Berlin later became a safe haven for key Ottoman officials who orchestrated the genocide, including Interior Minister Talaat Pasha.

Berlin would also become the stage for retribution. In 1921, as part of Operation Nemesis, Armenian genocide survivor Soghomon Tehlirian assassinated Talaat Pasha in broad daylight. His trial lasted just two days and ended in acquittal after his stark declaration: “I killed a man, but I am not a murderer.” While the trial ended after two days, it wasn’t conducted in good faith. It was meant to prevent any further scrutiny of Germany’s complicity.

Colmar von der Goltz, who headed the Prussian and later German military missions to the Ottoman Empire, trained the Ottoman army, promoted pan-Turkic ideology, and endorsed the ethnic cleansing of Armenians. He also facilitated major arms deals—estimated at roughly one billion euros in today’s value—and even produced rifles tailored for Ottoman forces. Johannes Lepsius’ documentation of the genocide was censored, media coverage was coordinated, and the strategic Berlin–Baghdad Railway project advanced. While historians debate the railway’s direct link to the genocide, Deutsche Bank’s archives contain photographs labeled “Deportations of Armenian forced laborers,” taken by Franz Günther on October 30, 1915, a date that speaks for itself.

A century later, the perpetrator becomes the host. Germany, whose officers once provided weapons, ammunition, and training to the Ottoman army, now offers space for reckoning.

Tamar Sarkissian, one of the curators and contributors of the Re-membering exhibition and event series at the German historical museum Villa Oppenheim notes that German involvement occurred at different levels.

“There were weapons delivered, ammunition delivered, military training, but there was also [Eberhard Graf Wolffskeel] von Reichenberg,” she says “He literally bombed the Armenian quarter in Urfa…He did not just advise; he actually conducted military operations. Some German military officials even signed deportation orders, officially becoming part of the genocide.”

Organized by Berlin’s Turkish and Armenian communities, primarily through the collectives AKEBI and Houshamadyan, the aim of Re-membering was to commemorate the 110th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, generate discourse, and celebrate the region’s shared cultures on neutral ground—somewhat neutral, at least. Along with the Maxim Gorki Theater and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), they put on extensive cultural programs to highlight a topic that has been historically overlooked in the German capital.

Sarkissian’s comprehensive research linking Germany to the Armenian Genocide—including photos from the Deutsche Bank AG archives, the Archiv des Informations-und Dokumentationszentrums Armenien, the Genocide Museum in Yerevan, the Lepsiushaus Potsdam, old German and international news clips, Vahakn Dadrian’s books, among other sources—was presented at the entrance on a large-format map of Berlin’s Charlottenburg neighborhood, where Villa Oppenheim is located. The map even notes that a member of the Oppenheim family itself was linked to the Genocide. Overall, the revelations are shocking, even for Sarkissian, an active member of the Armenian community in Berlin. The project initially began as part of her Master’s thesis in Urban Design at the Technische Universität Berlin.

The city is crawling with relics of the Genocide. The original map pinned 72 linked locations across Berlin, though the exhibition reduced the number to 28. According to Sarkissian, it was largely only leftist and/or Jewish newspapers that reported the atrocities in Ottoman Armenia at the time. We can guess what their fate came to be.

Between April and September, 2025 the installations in Re-membering infiltrated a niche, historic museum that connects Armenian and present-day Anatolian stories to Germany. Embedded throughout the museum’s permanent exhibition in Villa Oppenheim, the two exhibitions existed simultaneously. “We invaded the permanent exhibition a little bit,” is how Sarkissian described its unique curation, led by Asuman Kırlangıç, Lusin Reinsch, and Sarkissian herself.

As you weave through the space, you are constantly confronted not only with two different versions of history, but also two different ways of telling it: Contemporary street photography by Alicija Khatchikian in Armenia is displayed next to 19th century, gold-framed oil-on-canvas paintings—bounties of the same German imperialism complicit in genocide. Alongside Sarkissian’s map were family heirlooms and personal stories from Vahé Tachjian and Sarkissian, including her grandmother’s wedding dress hanging from the ceiling. Houshamadyan Books were displayed under tempered glass as a testament to the preservation of Western Armenian culture, a video essay by Nairy Shahinian was screened, and more. They hosted a total of 15 events, including city tours, the Vartavar festival, and a grape-harvest celebration in and around Villa Oppenheim, in collaboration with other local Armenian groups.

“The museum said that the opening was the biggest opening that they’d seen [in the five years of the director’s tenure],” said Sarkissian. This type of small, historic museum attracts a very specific breed of visitors: Germans, the kind who might mistake Albania for Armenia. It also draws tourists, school groups, and locals from the Turkish community. As expected, the Turkish embassy orchestrated some interventions when the organizers invited the district mayor to the Vartavar festival, which required police escorts. “They tried to intervene in another event she was part of, just to show: ‘we can bother you if you want,’” explained Sarkissian.

These interventions did not scare them away: “For me personally, it was very empowering to witness the events. The whole reason I’m doing everything I do here, including the exhibition, my work, and what we do with AKEBI, is to bring all of these people together.”

“I really love Berlin. Berlin is my home,” she added. While it may be problematic, it is also a hybrid city, perhaps one of the only places where Armenians, Turks, Kurds, Assyrians, Greeks, Lebanese, Palestinians, high-profile artists, local politicians, German retirees, an Azeri journalist wearing a gay pride flag, and any other curious bystanders can come together in solidarity.

“We tried to get out of our usual circle…to dance together, to eat together, to drink together… And the thing is, as far as I know, this only happens in [Berlin],” she said. “Because it is a post-migrant city where all of these people are living together. So it is possible to do this here. It would never be possible to do this in Beirut. I’m living in Germany. We can use this power, this privilege that we have here…It was about getting out of your comfort zone, not just for me, but also the other curators.”

Born and raised in Beirut, Sarkissian comes from a line of Genocide survivors. She is a member of AKEBI, working and living closely with Berlin’s Turkish community, organizes Armenian film screenings with Armenian Movies Day, and collaborates regularly with local groups on cultural projects such as the Western Armenian language cafe. Her Berlin-based work and research represents a contemporary, nuanced perspective that is not shy about acknowledging inconsistencies in her own culture while being proud of its resilience. “Not all Armenians have to be the same, because they’re not the same,” she said.

For all of Berlin’s ugly truths, it is also a breeding ground for new narratives. It is a place rife with clashes between liberation and oppression, nationalism and migration, and fierce rejection alongside stubborn conservation of the Western status quo. “We tried to make it as a group of Armenian and Turkish activists who want to work together for peace…for me, this is reparations,” said Sarkissian.

Berlin’s Major Institutions Chip-in

Across the city, Berlin’s pillar of sociopolitical cultural discourse in the performing arts, the Maxim Gorki Theater, hosted the extensive program: 100 + 10 – Armenian Allegories. The HKW hosted a series of film screenings, panels, and performances focused on the explicit targeting of women and girls during the Armenian Genocide: Silenced Voices, Unbroken Spirits: The Legacy of Armenian Women.

Unlike during the Armenian Genocide centennial, there were now young Armenian artists who had experienced the recent Artsakh wars themselves. The art was not only referencing archives, but also offering contemporary perspectives. In the slew of cross-generational narratives from Armenia and the many diasporas scattered around the city, one thing was clear: Armenians had a lot to say, and this was the time and the platform to say it.

“I mean, this was alive from every corner of Gorki….A young generation today, living people who saw it, who experienced it, who could talk about it and analyze it at the same time. Not only just tell the report, but they can analyze and do it from an artistic perspective. So, the variety of these approaches created an incredible energy in Gorki, that’s for sure,” said Armenian actress and activist Arsinee Khanjian whose performance Donation: Performing Memory II at the Gorki was sold out for its premier.

Curators Anahit Bagradjans and EVN Report’s Vigen Galstyan, among several co-curators, prepared a jam-packed schedule of theater performances, film screenings, readings, panel discussions, and a group exhibition. Together, they addressed seemingly every topic in the book, from genocide and the Artsakh Wars to feminism and queer issues, Armenian traditions and music, cultural heritage, family-politics, the Velvet Revolution, Soviet Armenia, and the gentrification of Yerevan, as well as what it means to be Armenian today in the face of an ongoing threat of war and an uncertain future.

It was a true “happening”, as it is called in art history, that left a mark on a globally acclaimed stage before an international audience. A bit of media attention in major news outlets such as the Tagesspiegel and TAZ didn’t hurt either. For just over a month, the Gorki garden and kantine became the site of a peculiar phenomenon in the German capital: at almost any point between April and June, the sounds of Armenians across generations and diasporas bantering in various dialects—from Artsakhtsi and Yerevantsi to Western Armenian, with bits of French, Russian, Turkish and English thrown into the mix—blended with the smell of pastries, cigarettes, coffee, or wine. If you closed your eyes for a few seconds, you were transported to a café in downtown Yerevan, or to some futuristic version of one. It was a bittersweet few seconds, of course, since the glue bringing everyone together was the topic of genocide.

A major focus was placed on informing the audience—perhaps in response to the international community’s perpetual inaction in the face of the ethnic cleansing of Armenians over the last 110 years. “There is an expectation to educate, be political, always represent the cause,” said filmmaker Christine Haroutounian during a panel discussion following a series of short-film screenings (Through the Lens of a Woman in Gorki’s Eichensaal room). Her words ring true for many of the pieces shown during the cultural programming, which carried a strong underlying informative element.

A few stood entirely on their own, especially in the Gorki’s Kiosk (the theater’s dedicated gallery space), which hosted a group exhibition called Future Imperfect: Armenian Art from Aftermaths. Yerevan-based documentary photographer and co-founder of 4plusphoto Nazik Armenakyan’s work, for example, focuses primarily on queer feminist issues. Her portraits of Armenian women with HIV, hung in the Kiosk, represented a brave confrontation with sexual taboos in Armenian society. As Galstyan, who curated the group exhibition in the Kiosk, writes: “Lacking deterministic agendas, these practitioners project the future not as a predestined void but as a site of possibility, where engagement with the ambivalences of history becomes the precondition for fostering positive change.”

There were also a few artists who took on the beast of pointing the finger at their host-country, some with more zeal than others. While Tamar Sarkissian’s map of Genocide history in Berlin, displayed at Re-Membering, takes the cake, Khanjian and her husband, director Atom Egoyan, in Donation, as well as the Ukrainian-Armenian director Roza Sarkisian in Karabakh Memory (no relation to Tamar Sarkissian), also addressed Germany’s complacency in the Armenian Genocide. Both had their own language of provocation.

At the premiere of Donation, the theater was buzzing. It was a highly anticipated comeback performance following Khanjian’s 2015 piece, Auction of Souls: Performing Memory, dedicated to Aurora Mardiganian on the occasion of the Genocide centennial. After a life-threatening illness gave Khanjian a renewed sense of raison d’être, and a phone call from Gorki’s intendant, Shermin Langhoff, the Armenian power couple, Khanjian and Egoyan, got to work. By donating the costumes used in the 2002 film Ararat to the theater, the performance’s mise-en-scène revolves around a hard-headed journalist named Gunther, played by Edgar Eckert, interrogating Khanjian about the point of the donation. In a quasi-stalkerish, confrontational manner, Gunther picks apart her career as an actress and activist in the Armenian diaspora, and they quickly slide into a tense exchange. Provoked by Gunther’s irritating ignorance, Khanjian is compelled to explain the history of the Genocide, the grave injustices within the Artsakh War, the significance of the Velvet Revolution, and the symbolism of donating the costumes.

Halfway through, the tension erupts as Khanjian confronts Gunther for using “blitzkrieg” interrogation tactics on her. He snaps at the word, shifting into what Khanjian calls “an emotional domain.” He launches into a rant in German to the audience, rooted in guilt and triggered by Khanjian’s word choice and its connotations of Nazi Germany. “It’s the noose around the neck of every cultural institution in this country!” he yells. “It’s one of the reasons for this donation: Germany’s responsibility. And by donating these costumes to the Gorki, almost entirely subsidized by the German government, you’re also involving the German taxpayers who are indirectly financing this project. You’re accusing Germany of complicity in the Armenian Genocide as an ally of the Turks!” he goes on.

The German guilt Khanjian intentionally displays is meant to speak to how that guilt has manifested in Germany’s contemporary culture, especially in its complicity in another genocide in Gaza. “[Guilt] has become a sort of element of German identity post-Second World War, which gives it a certain sense of righteousness about having dealt with the ugly terror of the Holocaust…Germany is becoming a player, like it did with the Ottomans, being involved in another genocide that is happening,” she said.

Back to the show—Khanjian denies saying “blitzkrieg” to accuse Gunther and apologizes for using the eponym in the first place. “Maybe I’m being too sensitive,” Gunther says, calming down. The two resume their interview after the audience is confronted with another bleak reality about their country’s legacy. Ultimately, it becomes a play about making a play. At the end, Gunther points out that the donated costumes actively took on a new form on the stage. Their pure presence was the symbolism he was trying to squeeze out of Khanjian for the duration of the performance.

“Our intent was that none of this really is happening, none of it. This is all in her head. That’s what happens when Gunther has no more arguments and says, ‘but this is a play, isn’t that what you wanted?’…So in her head, she’s no longer fighting with what I, Arsinee, for instance, fought over the years with my work, activism, objectified information, sterilized information, if you wish, by historians, politicians, political scientists, and archives. I am on a journey in my head to be free, and see whatever I can see. This play in my mind is an argument with myself, with what I know and what I don’t know,” explained Khanjian, adding that Gunther represents the internal dialogue she experiences as an Armenian who feels the need to prove herself, “Because I know that the world doesn’t care easily.”

Roza Sarkisian’s piece takes a more aggressive approach to addressing German complicity in the Armenian Genocide. Karabakh Memory is a multilayered performance laden with morbid satire. Actress Flavia Lefévre plays Sarkisian and jumps between autobiographical monologues about fleeing Artsakh at five years old during the war, later fleeing Ukraine, and the history of both wars.

“History only looks smooth and polished in textbooks. It was important for us to take the history of Karabakh apart, to see how it was constructed and to ask who has the right to tell it. When we juggle these different languages—whether it’s a jar of soil [from Artsakh], a sudden Eurovision scene in which some musicology professor reflects on Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, or the Kharkiv apartment where I had my last conversation with my grandparents—we try to explore the very nature of memory and knowledge. The main question is: who has the right to this knowledge? We discover that this knowledge, this memory, is not singular. It is fragmented, emotional, embodied, and sometimes absurd,” said Sarkisian in an interview.

We are also met with slap-stick moments, archival news footage, song, cabaret, piano and dance, with actors Tim Freudensprung and Aleksandra Malatskovska taking on several roles throughout the performance. Symbolic acts, like dispersing the jar of soil her father brought from Artsakh when they were displaced in 2023, or staging a funeral ceremony for Artsakh while calling it her “prison”, hint at her detachment from her “Armenianness.” Having grown up and been socialized in Ukraine, Russian imperial influence has tainted her sense of identity. Now based in Poland, the journey of identity continues: “The only thing I remember [from Artsakh] is the war. I thought, maybe it is true—I’m still the same damn five-year-old girl sitting in the basement. My only home is trauma. My only unrecognized republic is trauma. This is my dependence, my authentic experience, my vitality. And that I feel no nostalgia for Artsakh.”

Towards the end, an “auction” for Artsakh is staged in a market, followed by a man-hunt for German and Turkish audience members, who are forced at gunpoint to build a monument for Artsakh on stage.

“10 Euro for Karabakh. It’s a really good deal!” yells Malatskovska in a controversial metaphor for the fate of Artsakh, before she does a quick turnaround: “Look, look. Read. 1915. Berlin-Baghdad Railroad. German companies built this railroad. They exploited Armenian prisoners as slaves. You gave advice on how to solve the Armenian ‘question’. German weapons, German gunpowder, German advice. German officials, diplomats. They knew about massacres, deportations. They helped organize them. Do you have a guilty conscience? Do you have a guilty conscience!!??” At this point, Malatskovska is screaming, her voice cracking, at the audience and at her German counterpart [Freudensprung].

She calms down and returns to contemporary Germany: “The year 2023 [the year of Artsakh’s ethnic cleansing]. The monument to the victims of the Armenian Genocide in Cologne is dismantled. In the middle of the night. Quietly, without a word, you know. Turkiye pressed, Germans obeyed.” She gets heated again: “Who the fuck forced you to take it down? Huh? Not the ghost of the Ottoman Empire. No. Germans, today’s citizens. Yours. Your citizens. And now, stand up! You go and find me troops. Bring them to me. And we will rebuild the monument here.” Loud traditional Armenian music plays, and the actors start plucking audience members, mostly Turkish and German, to build a monument on stage in an unhinged commentary on German guilt. “When your history is erased, only a cynical gesture remains,” said Sarkisian. “But behind this cynicism is an attempt to save a trace…We are not celebrating this [auction] market—we are showing how those who have been eaten by this market survive.”

For Sarkisian, it was essential to give the German audience something to think about, to wash away Western comfort even for just a moment, and to confront them with a reality they may never comprehend but that their government perpetuates. “We did not want the audience to perceive it as something happening ‘over there’ in Karabakh, with ‘them’ the Armenians. It was a way to break that comfortable distance. We wanted everyone to feel what it means to be an instrument in someone else’s hands, when others command you, arrange you, and turn you into an extra in someone else’s drama. Yes, there were people who said this was racism. But our goal was not to offend. Our goal was to literally pull the German audience into our context, to force them to feel the discomfort of participating in this absurd theater that is the daily reality for many around the world,” she explained.

Interestingly, Sarkisian, who is based in Warsaw and focuses on documentary theater, had not confronted the story of Artsakh much in her past work, as someone who feels more Ukrainian than Armenian. “All the time I talk about my war, and I have no idea how to talk about Karabakh in Ukraine. I work with different people, with victims of war, and so on. And when Johannes [Gorki’s dramaturg] talked to me about this festival and about Karabakh, I remember I was also stuck,” said Sarkisian. “When I started to think about myself like some kind of protagonist, it really helped me create some sort of space,” she said.

By incorporating different media and storylines, and by diluting the “Armenians versus Turks and Azeris” narrative while also foregrounding German as well as Russian imperialism and complicity (both in Artsakh and now in Ukraine), Karabakh Memory was overflowing with confrontations and lessons, with vulnerable moments mixed with theatrical fun, ballads, and flamboyant costumes. A true medley.

The Topic of Genocide in Germany: An Elephant in the Room:

Genocide studies do not exist in a vacuum. We cannot discuss genocide remembrance culture in Berlin without considering the present day. Berlin is often discussed as a city with skeletons in its closet, and much of its contemporary, internationally-focused, and politically engaged cultural scene has been dedicated to reckoning with its dark past. But currently, the genocide in Gaza, and Germany’s Staatsräson, which binds its foreign policy to Isreal’s security, has resulted in near-unconditional support of Israel, including sending weapons, and has been used to justify silenceing Palestinian voices and critics of Israel’s genocide.

“Ironically, the Staatsräson has also had an adverse effect on Jews themselves, who comprise close to thirty percent of those cancelled in recent years over alleged antisemitic statements by state-funded German institutions. In December, the Heinrich Böll Foundation reportedly withdrew its support from co-sponsoring the Hannah Arendt Prize for political thought for journalist Masha Gessen because they drew parallels between Gaza and Jewish ghettos,” writes an article in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Middle East journal, Sada. It is one of several reports on Germany’s current repression of free speech, including reporting by the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights. In 2019, BDS (Boycott Divest and Sanction) was labeled antisemitic by the German anti-BDS resolution—suddenly, boycotting can get you cancelled, if not worse.

“Germany accepted to pay back, and still continues to, to the state of Israel by contributing financially [in its reparations for the Holocaust]. But the thing is that this whole position is a singular attempt by Germany to protect its image, because if we look at its present position about Gaza, what they are committing—even according to Israeli and Jewish genocide scholars, the honest ones who are trying to see things for what they are, as opposed to being defensive—this is officially a genocide,” added Khanjian. She also said it was important to mention Gaza in the interview about preparing for Donation: “Gaza was, of course, very much on our mind.”

It’s a textbook Catch22: Germany’s institutions, like the Gorki, are funded almost entirely by the German government, as mentioned in Donation by Eckert [Gunther]. Nationwide institutions are employing Staatsräson to avoid the topic of Gaza, while also undergoing massive budget cuts across the cultural (and several other) sectors. Museums and theaters interested in human rights need funding, but that funding has become conditional. If they want to survive, they had better align their language. If they want to talk about Gaza, they must do so carefully. Although the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz only recently began to condemn the blocking of aid and inadvertent bombing, he has yet to call it a genocide, and has applauded the upholding of the October 10, 2025 ceasefire, which has been broken at least 393 times.

“We appear to be world champions in looking the other way in Germany,” reads the interlude to Gorki’s Armenian Allegories program brochure by intendant Shermin Lanhoff. Yet most large, state-funded institutions, including Gorki and the HKW, have found themselves in a difficult position when addressing the ongoing genocide. Gorki issued a statement emphasizing Israel’s right to defend itself after October 7, 2023. The immediate assault on Gaza that ensued led some members, such as Yugoslavian artists speaking about the Bosnian Genocide in Four Faces of Omarska, to withdraw from the Gorki in response to its statement. Since then, the Gorki has removed the statement from its social media platforms and hosted several events addressing the war, including Trotzdem Sprechen [speaking anyway] and the show Incubator. When asked for a statement on their position on the genocide in Gaza, this was their response: “ _______”.

HKW’s current exhibition, Global Fascisms, was critiqued by artist and writer Adam Broomberg, who has been facing backlash in Germany for speaking about Palestine. In his exhibition review in Hyperallergic magazine, he criticizes the museums’ curation: “Only an Israeli artist is allowed to respond to the current events; the Palestinian is relegated to showing decades-old work. Moreover, a genocide is reduced to an ‘atrocious war’ and then further abstracted into a ‘context’ for artistic musings.”

His article is part of a large wave of artists, politicians, activists and historians raising concerns about free speech in Germany and the topic of genocide, including UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese and Yuval Abraham, the Oscar-winning co-director of No Other Land, during their recent visits to Berlin. As Broomberg writes, “Berlin, once a haven for dissent, has become a capital of censorship.”

A year of Armenian Genocide commemoration in Berlin with such a large scale of representation and media attention was unprecedented in the German capital. As Khanjian puts it, the programming was “very memorable, but also unique in terms of what Gorki has undertaken until now. And that was very courageous.” It was crucial to the city’s attempt at understanding the repercussions of genocide and its significance transcends Armenia, whether Germany likes it or not. At the end of the interview Sarkisian concluded: “Our cause stops being only an Armenian cause, or a Ukrainian cause, or a Palestinian cause, and becomes the cause of everyone who wants to live in a world without colonial hierarchies.”