Brueder Selke live at Zionskirche

The award-winning East Berlin-born, Potsdam-based, polyinstrumental composer duo Brueder Selke (CEEYS), with Sebastian Selke on cello and his brother Daniel Selke on piano, is continuously expanding the repertoire of its two main instruments and, as independent curator, regularly presents boutique musical happenings.

Now here is live footage from the performance at Zionskirche Berlin. You can still feel the spirit of resistance, the desire for freedom and the courage to act that shaped the history of the Zionskirche.

Time and time again, German history was made here.It is where Dietrich Bonhoeffer worked, and also where opponents of the East German regime met and set up a secret library.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer worked in the parish from 1931. After the Nazis took power he joined the resistance. He was arrested in 1944 and executed at Flossenbürg concentration camp on 5 April 1945 – just before the end of the war.

A bronze memorial to him was erected on the west side of the church in 1997. In the mid-1980s, opposition groups such as the “Zion’s Church Peace and Environmental Circle” began meeting in the basement of the church. It was also where they hid the “Umwelt-Bibliothek” (Environmental Library), containing officially prohibited books and magazines on environmental and human rights topics.

Following a raid, the Stasi arrested some of the members, which only brought the group to wider attention. Supporters held vigils and the events were closely reported in the Western media. The arrested members were soon released and the group gained great popularity, becoming a driving force in the civic movement that led to the end of the GDR.

Filmed and directed by Jonathan Goudefroy at Zionskirche, Berlin.

Recorded by Till Aldinger and Fabian KoppriVisuals by Paul Worms, Raphael Peters, Sebastian Selke and Daniel Selke Music written and performed by CEEYS (Brueder Selke).