The Handkerchief
In September 2025, the State Institute for Qualification and Quality Development in Schools (LI Hamburg) hosted Heritage Open Day, coinciding with the institution’s centenary. As a multidisciplinary artist working with memory, I was invited to create a performative work focused on the history of teacher training in Hamburg. Inspired by the handkerchief ritual in Herta Müller's 2009 Nobel Prize lecture, I structured my walk around the meanings and actions associated with this familiar object, inviting participants to engage with it directly. If Herta Müller saw in the handkerchief a marker of affection - a sign of care her mother showed when seeing her daughter off to school, - my project introduces several additional layers related to informal learning, audience agency, and counter-monument activism. Among other key elements included in the performance are custom handkerchiefs, a Polaroid camera, artifacts from the Hamburg School Museum, and the sound of a Weimar-era school bell.
Below: Memory cues created and captured by participants via Polaroid.
Images 1-10: Performative Walk “The Handkerchief”
Image 4: Sources https://untietotie.org/event/die-leerstellen-fuellen-koloniale-fragmente-im-kontext-schule/; https://www.ew.uni-hamburg.de/ueber-die-fakultaet/aktuell-2025/25-07-04-interview-sidney-oliveira.html; The Hamburger Schulmuseum (School Museum); https://www.gew.de/aktuelles/detailseite/verhaertung-und-frontenbildung
Hamburg (DE), 2025
Textile, Spoken Word, Sound, Bronze Sculpture on a Mobile Stand,
Historical Objects from the Hamburg School Museum, Polaroid Camera.
Duration: 50 min.
Exhibited at the State Institute for Qualification and Quality Development in Schools, Hamburg, on the occasion of the Heritage Open Day, 14.09.2025
Photo credit: Claudia Höhne; the participants of the performative walk (polaroids)
Kindly supported by the State Institute for Qualification and Quality Development in Schools, Hamburg
With thanks to Celina Rahman, Dr. Silke Urbanski, the team at the Hamburger School Museum, and Katharina Bosse.
©Franziska Windolf. All rights reserved.
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I created the installation “The Handkerchief” for the 2024 exhibition Global Munich: In Perspective at the Habibi Kiosk (Münchner Kammerspiele) as part of the festival What is the City NOW? The exhibition explored the diverse meanings of globalization within the city. My installation consisted of two distinct pieces: a miniature bronze monument, 15 cm in height, and an oversized handkerchief stretching two meters, both suspended within the space.
The miniature monument evokes the human body without representing a specific individual. It is a faceless figure with an arm transformed into a knot—a universal symbol for a memory prompt. The sculpture’s hood references the “Münchner Kindl,” the figure on Munich’s coat of arms since the 13th century. Originally a monk symbolizing the city’s founding, it has evolved into a commercial icon and a colloquial term for those born in Munich.
The outfit I sculpted into the monument’s form references the collaborative project “Meet The Memory Person” (2023–2024). This public figure, which I invented to collect stories of exile and migration during curated city walks, challenges traditional notions of who “Munich Originals” actually are. Furthermore, the sculpture’s leg posture references the “Moorish Dancers,” a 1480 woodcarving by Erasmus Grasser. Originally commissioned for Munich’s Old Town Hall, these figures were part of a complex heraldic program placing the Bavarian sovereign at the center of a cosmological worldview. By patching these references together, the monument addresses globalization in connection with city marketing and the pursuit of dominance, offering “Meet The Memory Person” as a vital counter-perspective.
The oversized textile handkerchief subverts an object commonly regarded as private. Historically, handkerchiefs served as a mass-printed medium used to circulate and commemorate major societal events. The textile sculpture features prints that address marginalized fragments of Munich’s historiography. These include a tree trunk as a non-human witness to time on one side; on the other, among others, the logo of the Croatian football club N.K. Dinamo München e.V. (founded in 1971), a reference to the Jewish-owned folk costume store, Volkskunsthaus Wallach (opened in 1900), and a fragment of the refugee aid poster "Welcome to Munich", created when millions fled war in Syria and Iraq (2015).
