German Sign Language and
Communication of the Deaf
Photo: UHH/Denstorf
10 January 2019, by Pamela Sundhausen
Photo: Uni-Göttingen
The focus of the exhibition is the linguistic and cultural heritage of older deaf people. Deaf people are a special cultural and linguistic minority group that is still largely invisible in our society. This is particularly true for deaf senior citizens, whose life experiences in the post-war period have been little documented, if at all. This exhibition gives a face to this, in many ways, special minority for the first time. The exhibition is based on interviews collected since 2016 at the Georg-August University in Göttingen. The subjects are deaf senior-citizens from all over Germany who were born between 1930 and 1950. The seniors’ interviews include descriptions of their lives, their schooling, their vocational training and experiences as members of the signing community in a hearing-oriented environment. The project seminar for the exhibition was supported by the university project Research-Oriented Teaching and Learning (abbreviated as FoLL in German) at the Georg-August University, Göttingen and it cooperates closely with the two research projects (In)visible Life Stories - documentation of the life, culture and language of older deaf people (Pro*Niedersachsen) and The Sign-Hub: Preserving, Researching and Fostering the Linguistic, Historical and Cultural Heritage of European Deaf Signing Communities with an Integral Resource (Horizon 2020). The grand opening of the exhibition will take place on 15 January 2019 [24t1] at 6.30 p.m. in the Centre for Cultural Studies (KWZ) at the Georg-August University, Göttingen (Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14). The exhibition will run from 15 January 2019 to 28 February 2019 in the foyer of the KWZ. The programme for the opening can be found here.
You can find further information via the following link: http://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/ausstellung/598123.html