LISA MARIE SCHMITT

Ihr Leben war Arbeit (Her Life Was Work), series of 11 digital prints on Hahnemühle baryta paper, framed under laser-engraved glass, 29.7 × 42 cm, 2025

What memories of a person remain after they have passed away? This question arose when I came across an old Protestant grave in a Berlin cemetery bearing nothing but the inscription Ihr Leben war Arbeit (“Her Life Was Work”).

During a residency in Viișoara, Romania, I encountered numerous graves with similar inscriptions. In contrast to Romanian Orthodox gravestones, which often focus on God, the afterlife, or the reunion with loved ones, German Protestant graves frequently emphasize suffering, duty, and hard work. This contrast made me reflect on how our ways of remembering the dead are shaped by cultural values and moral ideas.

In Viișoara, I have been researching on epitaphs found on gravestones in old cemeteries of Saxon communities. By tracing excerpts of these inscriptions onto aluminum foil I am attempting to recontextualize these commemorative texts, situating them between reflections on the moral weight of work and the strategies of modern advertising.

In the course of my research, I became interested in the Protestant work ethic, which, as German sociologist Max Weber argued, played a formative role for the rise of industrialization and, ultimately, contemporary capitalism.

Particularly intriguing to me is the relationship between modesty, frugality, and the accumulation of capital: values that appear opposed to contemporary consumerism, yet remain closely connected to present-day forms of investment and wealth accumulation.

The series Ihr Leben war Arbeit was created during the ȘAH Residency 2025

Between November 2025- February 2026 Ihr Leben war Arbeit has been exhibited in the framework of the intervention Reaktives Museum at Museum Gunzenhauser Chemnitz. Together with the selected Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter landscapes of Otto Dix the installation forms a melancholic and contemplative life and work cycle.