Johannes Heisig and Wolfgang Hilbig: Art and Literature in Dialogue at Museum Giersch

The Museum Giersch der Goethe-Universität is currently hosting the exhibition Einst war ich älter – Johannes Heisig im Dialog mit Wolfgang Hilbig, which runs until October 18, 2026. According to mggu.de and feuilletonfrankfurt.de, the exhibition marks the 85th birthday of the late writer Wolfgang Hilbig by exploring a more than three-decade artistic dialogue with painter and drawer Johannes Heisig. The showcase centers on eleven new works created in 2026 and presented to the public for the very first time.

Wolfgang Hilbig, who lived from 1941 to 2007, and Johannes Heisig, born in 1953, grew up in different generations and experienced life in the German Democratic Republic from distinct perspectives. feuilletonfrankfurt.de notes that Hilbig grew up in Meuselwitz as the son of an Arbeiterfamilie and worked for years as a boiler operator, while Heisig grew up in Leipzig as the son of painter Bernhard Heisig. Despite these differing social backgrounds and never having met in person, both men were shaped by the division of Germany and shared a deep engagement with themes of origin, identity, and memory. Curator Susanne Wartenberg explains that Heisig does not merely illustrate Hilbig’s writing, but reads the texts to absorb motives and moods into an expressive pictorial language where literature and painting meet on equal footing.

Decades of Artistic Engagement With Hilbig’s Texts

Heisig’s artistic engagement with Hilbig began in the 1990s, opening with the 1995 series Abfahrt, which used the train window as a central motif symbolizing distance, limitation, movement, and departure, as reported by feuilletonfrankfurt.de. In 2020 and 2021, Heisig turned his focus to Hilbig’s novel Ich through a series titled Bilder vom Erzählen. That novel deals with the inner division of an autobiographical narrator named M. W., a writer who operates under the code name Cambert as an informant for the Stasi, touching on questions of surveillance, conformity, personal complicity, and guilt.

Heisig describes his initial entry into Hilbig’s literary world as pure remembering, noting that the texts brought back the sounds, smells, and landscapes of his own childhood. Over time, he recognized those images as profound metaphors reaching deeply into his own self. The exhibition’s title itself, Einst war ich älter, is drawn from a line in Hilbig’s poem das meer in sachsen.

New Works Reference Hilbig's Lyrical Output and Frankfurt

The eleven newly unveiled 2026 works focus heavily on Hilbig’s lyrical output, combining drawing and painting techniques where color fields are repeatedly scraped away and reworked. Muted tones of gray, brown, and black evoke coal, soot, and ash, punctuated by golden highlights. Alongside the title piece, the new series references poems and prose including laßt mich in kalte fremden gehen, Increatum (ich schrieb, ich schrieb), episode, käfig der unsterblichkeit, and four sheets dedicated to the narrative Alte Abdeckerei.

Both sources emphasize Frankfurt’s unique role in bridging both men’s biographies and the exhibition. Hilbig had deep ties to the region starting in the 1970s, holding poetikvorlesungen at the Goethe-Universität in 1995 and serving as Stadtschreiber in Bergen-Enkheim in 2001 and 2002. Johannes Heisig, born in Leipzig—Frankfurt’s partner city—maintains his own strong ties to Frankfurt through numerous prominent portraits of public figures. The exhibition is situated to align with the environment of the 2026 Frankfurt Book Fair, creating a meeting point for literature, university life, and contemporary art.