In April 2025, letters were sent out to about forty prisons across Germany: from JVA Stuttgart to JVA Tegel, from Frankfurt am Main to Neustrelitz. Each letter proffered a simple question: would the facility accept a donation of books written in or about prison, by authors who have experienced the violence of confinement firsthand or who have critically engaged with it? Attached to the letter was a list of titles from which each facility could choose. The responses, ranging from enthusiasm to silence, became the core of Belia Zanna Geetha Brückner’s exhibition “Mit freundlichen Grüßen (Liste anbei)”, presented in September 2025 at WRG Sensor, Braunschweig. Those prisons that agreed to accept the donations have now permanently integrated the donated books into their libraries.
This project builds on an earlier work the artist realized in Hamburg, Reconstruction of the Current Book Inventory of the Juvenile Detention Institution Hamburg (HfBK Hamburg, 2019). That earlier project provided insight into what a prison library typically contains: self-help guides, practical manuals, crime novels, and a substantial amount of science fiction and fantasy books that offer distraction or skills for life after release. What remained absent, however, were critical reflections on imprisonment itself. Though many works on the penal system have achieved canonical status, it is hardly surprising that they circulate mostly in academic contexts rather than in the environments they describe. This is especially true among those whose lives they concern. Prisons, like many institutions, are not known for self-critique, and surely they do not see themselves as places of emancipation. In this new body of works, Brückner approached the prison libraries not by reproducing their contents but by adding to them. The central question shifted from What is there? What is missing—and will they accept this as a gift?
Fig.1
During research, it became evident to Brückner how many now-canonical texts were not merely set in prison—much like many Netflix series and pulp fiction novels—but were written there. From Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Gramsci, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky to Martin Luther King Jr. and Angela Davis, prisons have long been sites where radical thought and critique have incubated. The artistic aim of Brückner’s exhibition was to offer insight into the penal system through the words of those who have observed or experienced it: political critique, poetry, novels, and artist books. In Reconstruction of the Current Book Inventory of the Juvenile Detention Institution Hamburg, Brückner brought together writers who had spent time in prison with scholars and thinkers who challenged the hegemonies of confinement from the outside.
In Jean Genet‘s case(s), traveling without a ticket, “loitering”, and stealing twenty handkerchiefs led to imprisonment. The other authors represented in the exhibition have served sentences for civil disobedience in the fight against racial segregation (e.g., Martin Luther King), or for the publication of texts critical of a regime (Liao Yiwu), or the alleged support of a terrorist organization (e.g., Ahmet Altan, Angela Davis). Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Ronen Steinke, and Michel Foucault expressed criticism of the justice and penal system from beyond its walls. Arrested for indecency: Oscar Wilde. Imprisoned for political activity: Luis Sepúlveda. Pretrial detention without proof of personal criminal offenses: The G20 Trial of Fabio V. The list could continue indefinitely. What becomes clear is that the penal system disproportionately targets people living in poverty, racialized communities, and migrants—both historically and today. This inequality is not incidental but rather intrinsic to a capitalist, racist system. It shows how people are suspected, controlled, and punished for conditions produced by structural injustice.
Fig.2
The responses to the letters sent in spring 2025 came in slowly, delayed by bureaucracy and hesitation. Only a few institutions, such as the JVAs in Mannheim, Neustrelitz, and Zwickau, responded enthusiastically. Others sent polite but evasive rejections, citing “space limitations”, and others rejected the offer with no specified reasons. Some prisons declined the donation because the books wouldn’t fit the “reading interests of inmates” or were deemed “too intellectual”. Others stated that they were already well-equipped, or had limited storage capacities, or they turned down the donation due to a lack of capacity. Some gave no reason at all. In the end, it remains unclear whether a particular refusal came from real practical reasons or if they were all just false excuses. Many never replied at all.
The uneven distribution of acceptance, rejection, and ghosting mirrors a situation that is not uniformly regulated and thus manages the processing of caseworkers, social workers, and their superiors on each site individually. Behind administrative discretion and formal politeness, inaccessibility persists through silence and intransparency. The setting of the exhibition mirrored this structuring: simple shelves represented each prison. Books that were accepted were placed on corresponding shelves, ready to be donated after the finissage. Empty shelves—or empty spaces within them—stood for refusals and bureaucratic silence. Next to the shelves, anonymized responses were displayed in full: letters of apology, expressions of enthusiasm, or brief office-language rejections.
Fig.3
Around 550,000 people in Germany are fined each year for minor offences such as fare evasion, petty theft, or drug possession charges. When they cannot afford to pay the high fines, they are often sent to jail. Approximately 56,000 people serve what is known as a “substitute prison sentence” (Ersatzfreiheitsstrafe)[1] each year—in many such cases, defendants are homeless, unemployed, living with addiction or mental illness. According to the German Bar Association, in Berlin alone, more than 28% of those imprisoned under this provision in 2022 were unhoused. The current German government’s budget cuts reveal a clear shift away from social welfare and toward punishment. As global economic, social, political, and ecological crises deepen, the number of so-called “poverty crimes” is likely to rise—here and elsewhere. Initiatives such as Justice Collective Berlin and Freiheitsfonds, which have been bailing people out of prison for fare evasion for over three years, are campaigning against this injustice and calling for a new regulation in case law.
Against this social backdrop, after the exhibition, all of the books displayed were sent to the respective correctional facilities and are now available for loan. The project is an attempt to enable, through art, for words to circulate in places where movement is restricted—between the shelves of prison libraries and the walls of their bureaucracy. There, literature continues its quiet yet defiant struggle to liberate, abolish, and emancipate carceral systems as systems of social regulation.
//
- Footnotes
[1] Vgl. Bögelein, Nicole 2021: Und plötzlich ging alles ganz einfach. Die Ersatzfreiheitsstrafe in Zeiten von Corona, in: Informationsdienst Straffälligenhilfe, Heft 1: Die Pandemie – eine Zäsur für die Straffälligenhilfe 2021, S. 19-25.
All images:
Belia Zanna Geetha Brückner, Mit freundlichen Grüßen (Liste anbei), 2025. © Benno Hauswaldt, and courtesy of the artist.
