Current Fellows

Petra Heymach © Friederike von Rauch
Petra Heymach © Friederike von Rauch

Petra Heymach

Science/Topics focusing on the previously divided Germany

June, July, August 2022

Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur des Landes Brandenburg

Petra Heymach was born in Biedenkopf/Hesse in 1951. After studying special needs education and psychology, she worked as a teacher with a special focus on language at a school in Berlin/Kreuzberg. Her interest in Bettina von Arnim and her family began at the age of 18. Initially, she approached the subject with staged readings such as Goethes leidige Bremse, Szenen einer Ehe (Literaturhaus Berlin) and various lectures such as Bettina, eine Revolutionärin? From 1989 onwards, she devoted herself specifically to family research and conducted research in the archives of the (former) GDR. In 1992, she mounted her first exhibition, Vom Familiensitz zum DDR-Künstlerheim Bettina von Arnim at Schloss Homburg (North Rhine-Westphalia). In 2000, intensive research began on the painter Achim von Arnim-Bärwalde for a conference at Schloss Wiepersdorf in 2001 with the contribution Ein Cravaller mit großen Feusten. This was followed by training as an exhibition curator at the UdK in 2014 and various further training courses on the subject in 2016. From May to July 2015, she curated the second exhibition at Schloss Wiepersdorf on the life and work of the painter Bettina Encke von Arnim with the accompanying book Die Malerei ist mein ganzes Glück.