Contemporary Monument Concepts in Germany

The German word “Denkmal” (i.e. monument; “Denk mal nach!” means “think about it”) encapsulates a monument’s primary and vital function: to be a marker in public space prompting viewers to think and providing information to trace history.

A major point of criticism in the contemporary debate on monument concepts, however, is that many monuments perform this function only inadequately. Monuments are abstract and seek a common denominator. They aim to make a collective statement on historical events, but all too often, individual viewers are given hardly any or too few starting points for their own reflection.

Prompting Remembrance

German and international artists have been trying to critically and creatively address this point since the 1980s, presenting concepts that aim to provide alternative ways of thinking about history in public space. Many of these approaches focus on the idea of dispensing with a traditional, grand type of monument, installing “remembrance prompts” in public places instead, which are as inconspicuous as they are surprising. While this search for alternative remembrance projects has been of a fundamental nature, it has manifested itself in Germany mainly in connection with some recent monuments against Fascism. Gunter Demnig’s “Stolpersteine” (i.e. Stumbling Stones), which he has had laid in many German cities, illustrate this concept in exemplary fashion. Paving stones bearing the names of people who were deported during the Nazi era are laid in front of buildings where they lived to recall their fate. The observer “stumbles” over these stones and is made to think.

Tracks in everyday life

A project with a similar basic intention was realised by the two Berlin artists Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock in 1993 in Berlin’s “Bavarian Quarter” in Schöneberg as a monument against anti-Semitism. Stih and Schnock had 80 coloured double signs put up at the roadside. At first sight, they look like ordinary road signs or advertisements. Only when one takes a closer look does it become apparent that there are pictograms on the front of the signs that refer to texts on the back, taken from Nazi decrees and laws that successively excluded Jewish citizens. The concept brings together a pictogram of a bench, for example, with the text of a decree which only allowed Jewish citizens to use benches specifically labelled as being for their use.

Research

Finally, reference should be made to a project by the French artist Christian Boltanski, which he realised in Berlin-Mitte in 1990. Boltanski’s work The Missing House focuses on an empty site in Grosse Hamburger Strasse left by a house destroyed in the war. The area had a large proportion of Jewish residents until the 1930s. The artist carried out archive research on the building’s former residents and discovered that the Jewish inhabitants had been expelled or deported by the Nazis. Plaques were attached to the fire wall of the adjacent building bearing their names, occupations and the dates they lived in the house. The gap left by the destroyed house is thus linked with references to its former residents, who are thus no longer anonymous. Boltanski linked his installation with the presentation of his research findings, giving visitors additional information on what happened to each of the residents. Ownership of the work later passed into the hands of the district office of Berlin-Mitte, and today the archive findings are on display at the district’s local museum. Boltanski’s aim was to open up “space for memory” between the exemplary and “authentic” place on the one hand and the researched individual biographies on the other, aiming to encourage the viewer to take the initiative in reflecting on them.

What all these examples have in common is that they attempt to detach remembrance work and the resulting moral position taken up by individuals from the traditional, grand type of monument. Historical tracks should rather be anchored in the everyday world, appealing to passers-by to think for themselves and pointing to the need for every individual to take critical responsibility in everyday life.