Sites that Matter: Current Developments of Urban Holocaust Commemoration in Berlin and Munich

Abstract

Let us imagine you are a visitor in Berlin and take a walk through the historically relevant places in the city centre, as Berlin’s tourist material might have recommended. You start your walk at Peter Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which before its dedication was by Germany’s former chancellor Gerhard Schröder imagined as ‘Ein Ort, an den man gerne geht’ — ‘A place, one likes to visit’¹ (as quoted by Jureit, 2010: 36). Sunbathing residents and picture-taking tourists at the field of stelae seem to confirm Schröder’s idea since the opening in 2005. Just a few steps away from it, if yet somewhat hidden, you find the Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under the National Socialist Regime at the edge of the Tiergarten, Berlin’s largest inner-city park. The work of Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, dedicated in 2008, consists of one single concrete stele, similar to those of Eisenman’s memorial, but slanted. On a screen inside you can watch a video-loop of kissing same-sex couples. Since October 2012 a few steps further through the Tiergarten in the direction of the building of the Reichstag, the historical and present place of the Parliament, you come across the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe Murdered under the National Socialist Regime. The work by Dani Karavan consists of a well with a retractable stone in the middle, onto which a fresh flower is placed every day.