The Collision of Freedom

The exhibition „‘Collision of Freedom. Nazi Persecution of Czech, German and Polish Swing Dancers and Jazz Musicians” offers a comparative look at a transnational phenomenon for the first time.

Jazz music and swing dancing were popular in all three Central European countries in the interwar period. In the big cities in particular, there were numerous people who indulged their love of jazz and swing in bars, cafés and concert halls.

However, the National Socialists despised jazz and swing, which is why they suppressed the music and dance in Germany from 1933, and later also in the territories conquered by the Nazi regime.

The exhibition traces this development starting with the ‘Beginnings of Jazz in Europe’. The second part, ‘Youth, Jazz and Politics’, deals with youth subcultures and the incipient defamation and persecution by the Nazi regime in Germany. In the section ‘Swing in wartime’, biographies and localities are used to illustrate the increasing practice of persecution. Stories of self-assertion and resilience are revealed in the fourth section, ‘Resistance through music’. In the final section ‘Liberation. Future. Hope’, biographies of survivors and their continued work after 1945 are told.

Curator: Michał Miegoń

Exhibition organizers: Gdynia, Gdynia City Museum, Bremen Alliance for German-Czech Cooperation e.V., Univerzita Karlova – Pedagogická fakulta

Partner of a Gdynia edition of the Exhibition: Harlem Beats 

The exhibition was co-financed by funds from Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft | EVZ Foundation as part of the “Local History” program.