Dialogue in the Dark vision was founded by Dr. Andreas Heincke, whose family is Jewish and German.  Members of his mother’s family were victims of the Holocaust while his father’s side was supporters of the regime.  At 13 years old, he took his toy tanks and cars and made them peaceful by painting red crosses on them when he learned that his Jewish relatives were murdered during the course of the war. Since then, Andreas has known the importance of tolerance, open dialogue and exchange within the human race.

Much later, working in a broadcasting corporation, Dr. Andreas Heinecke tried to develop a rehabilitation program for his colleague, who had lost his eyesight in a car accident.  Andreas was startled by the lack of relevant information available in either dictionaries or encyclopedias. On the other hand, despite the fact that he couldn’t see, Dr Heinecke’s collegue had a keen sense of hearing and the ability to listen and to put pieces together.  Changing jobs to working at the Frankfurt Association of the Blind, Andreas gained new insights into humanity. He was sad to see that the society was so prejudiced against the visually impaired, but he realized that the prejudice was not exactly malice. Instead, it was out of ignorance and the lack of interaction with those who were ‘different’.

Andreas recalled the words of Martin Buber the philosopher: ‘the only way to learn is through encounter.’  In 1988, the first Dialogue in the Dark exhibition opened in Hamburg, aiming at breaking down prejudices and ignorance towards the visually impaired in society.

In 1996, Dialogue in the Dark flew out of Germany to open temporary exhibitions in museums and festivals. Eventually, permanent exhibitions were put up around the world: Frankfurt, Munich (Germany), Milan (Italy), Atlanta (US), Guadalajara (Mexico), Holon (Israel) as well as many others.