A groundbreaking art exhibition at Potsdam's Minsk art house is shedding new light on one of East Germany's most controversial architectural legacies: the prefab housing blocks known as "Plattenbau." The exhibition "Wohnkomplex" (Housing Complex) presents 60 artworks that explore life within these concrete structures, revealing ghostly concrete landscapes, stifling atmospheres, and connections to right-wing terrorism.

The "Platte," as these buildings were colloquially known, represents an inherently ambivalent piece of East German architectural history that has now found its way into the museum. These standardized residential buildings sprouted en masse outside East German cities from the 1960s to the 1980s. During the GDR era, they served as proof of socialist efficiency, were nicknamed "worker lockers" by the public, and symbolized the ideological ossification of society, as depicted in Brigitte Reimann's cult novel "Franziska Linkerhand."

Nearly a quarter of all East German residents lived in these prefab buildings. The most commonly used housing series was the WBS 70, designed by architect Wilfried Stallknecht. Its prototype in Neubrandenburg is now under historical preservation. The perception of these buildings has evolved significantly since German reunification, when they became the tragic setting for the "baseball bat years" of right-wing violence and were either demolished or given colorful facade renovations.

Curator Kito Nedo, who grew up in Leipzig himself, describes these structures as a "socialization environment" for many Germans. In his exhibition at the Potsdam art house Das Minsk, the prefab building appears to be declared a museum object, a cultural heritage worthy of remembrance. This impression is reinforced by the show's opening with Markus Draper's architectural models in stereotypical concrete gray, which are reconstructions of actual residential buildings where the Stasi housed fugitive RAF (Red Army Faction) members.

The exhibition's complexity is reflected in its very title "Wohnkomplex." This term, borrowed from the USSR into East Germany, originally described an ensemble of residential buildings for around 5,000 people with a local supply center. However, the exhibition addresses the complex and socially difficult cultural heritage of prefab housing through artworks by notable artists including Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, Manfred Pernice, and Wenke Seemann, created both during the GDR era and after 1990.

Architecture researcher Philip Meuser provides a chronology of prefab construction from the first experimental building in 1953 to the never-realized WBS 90 type from 1989. The exhibition catalog offers a glossary explaining forgotten terms like "IWC" - the coveted indoor toilet that was a luxury in these apartments.

Uwe Pfeifer's paintings from the 1970s capture the sharp lines and graphic patterns of Halle-Neustadt's ghostly, seemingly uninhabited architecture stretching to the horizon. Occasionally, Pfeifer inserts dreamy moments into his composed objectivity: a red clothesline in morning fog, a chain of stones in the wind. These works reveal the tension between the buildings' stark functionality and moments of human tenderness.

Sybille Bergemann's photo series from Berlin-Lichtenberg in the late 1970s shows how the monotonous floor plans of these buildings swallowed all individualism. Each of her empty interior shots reveals the same living room staleness and oppressive atmosphere. The resigned domesticity of residents is further explored in a film by Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani, featuring two ravers from central Berlin who unsuccessfully search for a cool club location in Marzahn, becoming disillusioned in the process.

Sebastian Jung's expressive gouache paintings on textured wallpaper speak of confinement, stuffiness, and escape fantasies. Like the facade tiles of some East German modernist buildings, 26 brightly colored abstract faces hang side by side with mouths open in shock. Reminiscent of Munch's "The Scream," Jung titles them "East Scream" in 2025. Jung recently exhibited in dilapidated prefab buildings in Leipzig, maintaining a direct connection to these spaces.

The exhibition takes on darker themes through Henrike Naumann's unsettling reconstruction of two prefab youth bedrooms, tracing the private political beginnings of the neo-Nazi terrorist group NSU in a Jena-Winzerla settlement. This coincides with the recent opening of an NSU documentation center in Chemnitz, highlighting how these architectural spaces became breeding grounds for extremist ideologies.

The artists and curators acknowledge that society is still in the midst of processing the legacy of prefab housing. The exhibition deliberately avoids creating museum-like distance from this concrete-heavy cultural heritage, recognizing that these buildings and their social implications remain very much part of the present. The "Platte" continues to shape German society and memory, making this artistic exploration both timely and necessary for understanding the complex relationship between architecture, ideology, and human experience in post-socialist Germany.