War Damage Maps (2025) has as its subject a selection of World War II damage maps of German cities held in the MacOdrum Library’s Archives and Special Collections in Ottawa, Canada. It is an essayistic approach into the complex and violent history of mapping in combination with the filmmakers family history and memories of loss and war that shaped her artistic practice of the last fifteen years.  

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A film by Sonya Schönberger

 in collaboration with Jerzy Elżanowski and the MacOdrum Library Archives and Special Collections at Carleton University

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Filmed by Pixie Cram and Colin Elliott (Ottawa) and Flo Maak (Berlin)

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Supported by Johan Voordouw and Elizabeth Harding, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

 

Ines Hahn and Sebastian Ruff, Stadtmuseum Berlin

 

Historical support by Niels Gutschow

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Christa Peters and Christel Schneiders quotes are taken from interviews done by Sonya Schönberger within her archive of memories of the time of the Second World War

 

Photos of Berlin in 1945 by Cecil F. S. Newman ©Stadtmuseum Berlin, 

photographs of the album by Christof Zwiener in 2025

 

Berlin Damage Maps 1945 courtesy of Collection Foundation 

Stadtmuseum Berlin

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Edited by Flo Maak

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Text and voice over by Sonya Schönberger

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Sound recording by Anouschka Trocker

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Ottawa/Berlin, 2025