The view from above is often not bad," says Barbara Klemm. This is how one of her many well-known pictures was created. The 1981 demonstration against Runway West separated demonstrators and white-helmeted police officers, the accredited press behind the rows. Except for Klemm, who had not specifically registered – and climbed onto the roof of a VW bus. This is how the balance of power can be seen from above: on the right, the angry demonstrators. On the left, like a snake of white dots and scales, the policemen with their shields and helmets. In between, an earthen moat that has almost something medieval about it.

Finding the image in the scene

Eva-Maria Magel

Senior cultural editor Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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A day of democracy too, one of implacable opposition. But the top view is not only something that rarely succeeds in such moments. Because chance and luck have to play along, as always. Here, as elsewhere, however, Klemm usually did not grasp the processes of democracy from the very top or in the middle. But as a counterpart who has to choose as quickly as consciously where he lies, the image in this scene. And so it is not surprising that Klemm, from 1970 to 2005 editorial photographer of the F.A.Z., prefers to point to the never-shown picture next to the well-known one when she talks about the West Runway: a timbered tower on the protest site, landscape, a portrait format.

If you want to see this photograph, you have to visit the exhibition "Days of Democracy", which can now be seen in Villa 102 on Bockenheimer Landstraße, the city's former literature house, as a contribution to the St. Paul's Church anniversary of the KfW Foundation in cooperation with the F.A.Z. Together with curator Daniela Leykam, Klemm and curator Daniela Leykam have selected almost two dozen political images from four decades, which hang airily and without individual inscriptions in the historical rooms, have an effect on their own, with a few classifying texts on partition walls and the illustrated books with Klemm's contemporary historical photographs to leaf through.

Klemm photographed the hut village against the West Runway, demonstrations, ceremonies, meetings of politicians such as Brezhnev and Brandt in 1973, Ernst Jünger in St. Paul's Church or the then Federal President Roman Herzog in the Schirn in 1998, on the occasion of the exhibition "1848 Departure to Freedom – On the 150th Return of the First German National Assembly". It is the photographer who sets priorities. The fraternal kiss of Brezhnev and Honecker, for example, circulates printed on T-shirts in the variant of Régis Bossu from Griesheim – but Klemm's photograph of this moment, now on display at Villa 102, shows the entire phalanx of top-class Soviet and GDR politicians behind the two, their gazes on this October 5, 1979, the occasion was the 30th anniversary of the founding of the GDR.

Only ten years later, on November 10, 1989, Klemm climbed once again – to show an overview of the Berlin Wall occupied by young people. It had "suddenly become a monument to the past madness," it said in the F.A.Z. The fall of the Berlin Wall was "the culmination of my journalistic work," says Klemm, and as is the case with the images of democracy: In some cases, as here, the great significance of the moment is already apparent during the event itself – and sometimes only in retrospect.

"The pinnacle of my journalistic work"

"It's rare for you to make a difference with a picture," says Klemm. This is frustrating, given the important images from war zones of many colleagues, for example. Making a difference for democracy, with a picture, but now there is also a photograph of the exhibition: On July 25, 1969, Klemm photographed the thugs who guarded a meeting of the NPD in front of the Cantate Hall on the Großer Hirschgraben as "hall protection". At that time, Klemm was still employed as a clichographer, her photographs were taken freely, and so the photo went through the European press. The message: The right in Germany wants to be strong again – and move into the Bundestag in the fall. That narrowly failed to reach the five percent hurdle. Later it was said that this had achieved more Klemm's image than the election campaign of the opposing parties.

■ Days of Democracy. Photographs by Barbara Klemm, KFW-Stiftung Villa 102, Bockenheimer Landstraße 102, until 28 May, open Thursday and Friday 13 p.m. to 19 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 12 p.m. to 18 p.m., guided tours from 12 May.