Upcoming Matinees
Through five exhibitions a year, the artistic director and board of directors, working on a volunteer basis, provide opportunities for their members and all citizens interested in art. The goal of all these initiatives is to show new paths, open eyes, and awaken sensitivity—especially in a noisy and superficial world. In addition to established figures in the contemporary art scene, young artists are regularly invited to present their work to the public. Art in discussion is a school for tolerance. Readings, musical events, and themed evenings expand the Kunstverein Oerlinghausen’s sophisticated program.
06.09.–18.10.2026
Exhibition
Beate Haupt
Encounter with Moses
For her exhibition in the Old Synagogue, Beate Haupt, an artist who lives and works in Braunschweig and was born in Wolfenbüttel in 1966, has created a series of works entitled Encounter with Moses. It developed from an image that had been in her mind for years and that had originated while swimming in the Mediterranean: a young man with long hair standing in water. A slight chest blurred the clear attribution to gender. A modern man, yet as if from an old painting, glistening, enveloped in the pale light purple of the water. She wants to show this man, a Moses of today, strong and weak at the same time, struggling with the water, looking around fearfully, striding proudly into the floods, blowing the water away, swimming, drifting. Beate Haupt deliberately leaves no room for the biblical story of parting the waters and walking through them. She wants to show a more everyday story – as it happens today, all over the world.
27.09.2026, 11.30 am
Talk
Christina Végh
Art societies and contemporary art
04.10.2026, 11.30 am
Concert
Jenny Meyer
concert with harp
Autumn 2026
Book Presentation
Jürgen Hartmann, Isolde Müller-Borchert and Prof. Dr Andreas Beaugrand
A New History of the Jews in Oerlinghausen
This publication focuses on the various synagogues of Oerlinghausen. Through an examination of their origins, architectural changes and use, it tells the story of a place where Jewish life was a visible part of the community for some 250 years – both in everyday life and in the townscape. The book is based on newly uncovered archival sources, including previously little-examined community accounts and administrative records. These enable the history of the synagogues in Oerlinghausen since the 18th century to be traced in a largely coherent manner for the first time.
The focus is on the various synagogues: early prayer rooms in private or rented premises from the mid-18th century onwards, followed by two modest buildings, and finally the imposing new building from the late 19th century on Tönsbergstraße. These synagogues also tell the story of the development of the local Jewish community. They reveal internal Jewish conflicts, religious orientations and social changes.
Furthermore, the publication examines the context in which these synagogues were built and existed. Issues of integration and exclusion, rising anti-Semitism and government regulations had a direct impact on their history. Ultimately, the key question is why this synagogue – unlike many others – largely survived the Nazi era structurally and has been preserved to this day as a testament to Oerlinghausen’s Jewish history.
08.11.–20.12.2026
Exhibition
Daniel Wagenblast
Man and Space
Daniel Wagenblast, born in Schwäbisch Gmünd in 1963, is a master craftsman when it comes to working with wood. Since studying at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart, his theme has been humanity in relation to the world – be it pistols, animals, the globe, a car or a church, a tank, a house, a man or a woman. All these actors in Wagenblast’s sculptures tell stories of shifts in scale and wondrous relationships between the world and people and their things: humans as seekers, watchers, dreamers on the brink of the abyss, or heroes conquering the world. A complex world, an entire cosmos, is created with simple means. His figures are rather prototypical and, not unusually, based on the artist himself. The deliberately rough surface takes away much of any illusionistic impression – it is the artist’s reality that we encounter in the works, which, at a distance from the reality we perceive, immediately becomes the truth.
22.11.2026, 11.30 am
Performance
Anna Bella Eschengerd
Settled in
06.09.–18.10.2026
Exhibition
Beate Haupt
Encounter with Moses
For her exhibition in the Old Synagogue, Beate Haupt, an artist who lives and works in Braunschweig and was born in Wolfenbüttel in 1966, has created a series of works entitled Encounter with Moses. It developed from an image that had been in her mind for years and that had originated while swimming in the Mediterranean: a young man with long hair standing in water. A slight chest blurred the clear attribution to gender. A modern man, yet as if from an old painting, glistening, enveloped in the pale light purple of the water. She wants to show this man, a Moses of today, strong and weak at the same time, struggling with the water, looking around fearfully, striding proudly into the floods, blowing the water away, swimming, drifting. Beate Haupt deliberately leaves no room for the biblical story of parting the waters and walking through them. She wants to show a more everyday story – as it happens today, all over the world.
27.09.2026, 11.30 am
Talk
Christina Végh
Art societies and contemporary art
04.10.2026, 11.30 am
Concert
Jenny Meyer
concert with harp
Autumn 2026
Book Presentation
Jürgen Hartmann, Isolde Müller-Borchert and Prof. Dr Andreas Beaugrand
A New History of the Jews in Oerlinghausen
This publication focuses on the various synagogues of Oerlinghausen. Through an examination of their origins, architectural changes and use, it tells the story of a place where Jewish life was a visible part of the community for some 250 years – both in everyday life and in the townscape. The book is based on newly uncovered archival sources, including previously little-examined community accounts and administrative records. These enable the history of the synagogues in Oerlinghausen since the 18th century to be traced in a largely coherent manner for the first time.
The focus is on the various synagogues: early prayer rooms in private or rented premises from the mid-18th century onwards, followed by two modest buildings, and finally the imposing new building from the late 19th century on Tönsbergstraße. These synagogues also tell the story of the development of the local Jewish community. They reveal internal Jewish conflicts, religious orientations and social changes.
Furthermore, the publication examines the context in which these synagogues were built and existed. Issues of integration and exclusion, rising anti-Semitism and government regulations had a direct impact on their history. Ultimately, the key question is why this synagogue – unlike many others – largely survived the Nazi era structurally and has been preserved to this day as a testament to Oerlinghausen’s Jewish history.
08.11.–20.12.2026
Exhibition
Daniel Wagenblast
Man and Space
Daniel Wagenblast, born in Schwäbisch Gmünd in 1963, is a master craftsman when it comes to working with wood. Since studying at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart, his theme has been humanity in relation to the world – be it pistols, animals, the globe, a car or a church, a tank, a house, a man or a woman. All these actors in Wagenblast’s sculptures tell stories of shifts in scale and wondrous relationships between the world and people and their things: humans as seekers, watchers, dreamers on the brink of the abyss, or heroes conquering the world. A complex world, an entire cosmos, is created with simple means. His figures are rather prototypical and, not unusually, based on the artist himself. The deliberately rough surface takes away much of any illusionistic impression – it is the artist’s reality that we encounter in the works, which, at a distance from the reality we perceive, immediately becomes the truth.
