Contemporary Monument Concepts in Germany

Artist Gunter Demnig makes and mounts commemorative stones for those deported and killed by the National Socialist regime – not for victimized groups, but for individual victims. They’re small, personalized “stumbling stones” fitted flat into the pavement to – figuratively – “trip up” passersby.

Some six million Jews were murdered during the Nazi era in Germany and Europe, along with Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, political and religious opponents, and people with disabilities. The Cologne sculptor Demnig (60) researches the victims’ personal histories and their last freely chosen place of residence. In front of each building where a victim dwelt he hammers in a 10 x 10 cm concrete block. A brass plaque on the upper face of each stone bears an inscription showing the name, year of birth and information about the deportation of the deceased. In Kreuzberg, Berlin, for example: “Julius Laufer lived here / B. 1878 / Deported / Destination??? / Fate???” Hedwig Hermann, a tailor, b. 1886, also lived in the neighbourhood. It now turns out that both were deported to Riga in 1942.

Demnig’s commemorative stones are touching because they bring back to the present people who once lived in our neighbourhood, even in our own building. And because these people have names. “Auschwitz was their destination and their terminus,” explains the artist, “but the unfathomable, the horror, began in the apartments and buildings.”

Sparking sidewalk exchanges

Those who tread on the brass plaques actually keep the memories alive by inadvertently rubbing the rust off the metal and bringing back the shine. Even if they’re liable to overlook the little inscriptions. So the plaques are intended to be trodden upon. And to spark sidewalk chats among passersby while Demnig is busy hammering in the engraved cobblestones. To read the inscription you’ve got to bend over – which may be interpreted as bowing to the victims in tribute.

The artist hit on the idea of the “stumbling blocks” in 1993 while commemorating the murdered Sinti and Roma gypsies in Cologne. In 1994 he exhibited photos and his first Stolpersteine in a church; a year later he experimented with his first stones in the sidewalk. As a participant in the project “Artists Research Auschwitz”, he put 55 stones in Berlin sidewalks in 1996. Four years later he was allowed to lay 600 stones in the pavements of Cologne, though getting permission there was no mean feat. But the real breakthrough came when Kreuzberg, Berlin, authorized another 2,000. In recognition of his work, the artist has since been presented with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Jewish History Award (for Germans who make a significant contribution to the preservation of Jewish history and culture).

School classes and associations join in

People are getting involved in this Holocaust commemoration project with considerable elan: many have started up initiatives to lay stumbling stones, school classes and associations research personal data, sponsors provide funding. It currently costs €95 to make and lay a stone, anyone can be a sponsor. The municipalities don’t incur any expense, but each municipal or town council decides whether or not stones may be laid. Sometimes they’re even put on private premises if the owners consent.

The project has galvanized people with very different world views. Church congregations are joining in, as are humanistic associations, local history societies, and history teachers. Relatives of the slain take part in the commemoration too, flying in from the US, Israel, England or France to attend the laying of Stolpersteine. Some sponsor the commemoration of their lost relations.

Project for Europe

By August 2008 Demnig had laid some 15,000 stones in over 345 towns, and there’s still a steady stream of incoming requests. These monuments to the victims of National Socialism are spreading not only through big cities like Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Dortmund, but also in small towns like Attendorn, Lübben, Haselünne, Pfullendorf and Bad Zwesten. Demnig’s assistant Uta Franke coordinates and documents the project. In late April 2007 Demnig laid Hungary’s first three stones in Budapest, with more to come in various Hungarian towns. Austria’s sidewalks received their first commemorative stones in 2006. Contacts have already been made in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Milan and Paris, for the project is of Europe-wide scope.

Opposition in Munich, Leipzig, Freiburg

Some municipalities, however, don’t want memorial stones on their pavements. The city council of Munich, for instance, turned down the project in 2004. Both the city’s mayor, Christian Ude, and the president of the Jewish community there, Charlotte Knobloch, spoke out against it. Knobloch conceded the project was well meant, but felt this form of commemoration would desecrate and sully the memory of the victims, as she stressed in a statement to the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Mayor Ude argued that Munich already has several memorials. The vice-president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, on the other hand, Dr. Salomon Korn, emphatically endorsed the project.

Leipzig likewise initially rejected the proposition in 2001: “In form and content, the stumbling blocks recall Hollywood Boulevard in L. A.” So it wasn’t till 2006 that the first stones could be put in place in Leipzig. Some cities like Freiburg at first objected that passersby were walking all over the dead. “A stumbling block is no tombstone,” rejoindered Demnig. But in 2002 the Freiburg municipal council okayed the laying of Stolpersteine. It was the funding, on the other hand, that preoccupied the Osnabrück cultural affairs committee in its early 2007 deliberations. The estimates for organization, coordination and public relations came to about €6,000, according to the Neue OZ online. The committee has recently resolved to go ahead with the project.

Hamburg’s mayor Ole von Beust and Protestant bishop Maria Jepsen have come out in favour of the stumbling blocks, which the bishop has pledged to sponsor. The district assembly in the Hamburg suburb of Bergedorf, however, has granted local squatters a say in the public pavements.

Some homeowners oppose the memorials, arguing that they constitute an encroachment on their rights of ownership and make it harder to sell their property. Shopkeepers in Brühl near Cologne say the little plaques are bad for business.

A map of the unfathomable

Some residents may be uneasy because the stones are laid on the boundaries of their private property or premises. To many of us, the stones evoke the spectre of the expropriation of the Jews: a violent process that may have taken place in our very building, perhaps even in our flat. Centralized monuments, like the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (aka the Holocaust Memorial), are – literally – easier to sidestep. That’s precisely why Demnig opted for decentralized memorials at German doorsteps.

But the vast majority of reactions are positive. Naturally, Demnig can’t put in six million stones, but that’s not his objective anyway. Every personal stone symbolizes all the victims, he stresses. Taken together, the sites form a map of the unfathomable. Familiar places where, we now know for sure, others were deported. The site map also shows all the places where people wish to commemorate the victims of the Nazi regime and where they invest time, money, their own names as sponsors and a great deal of engagement. Places whose residents are aware of their history.

Kirsten Serup-Bilfeldt: Stolpersteine. Vergessene Namen, verwehte Spuren. Wegweiser zu Kölner Schicksalen in der NS-Zeit, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2003, 160 pp., €8.90; ISBN 3462035355 Gabriele Lindinger/Karlheinz Schmid (eds.): Größenwahn – Kunstprojekte für Europa, Lindinger & Schmid Verlag, 1993; 227 pp., €25, ISBN 3-929970 - 03 – 1