Post by Paddy by Grace on Dec 8, 2008 1:52:45 GMT -7
www.atlantic-times.com/archive_detail.php?recordID=1541
Artist Gunter
Demnig has, by now, set 16,000 cobblestones in place, each covered with a brass plate that bears the names of Holocaust victims. Of all places, Munich, once the “capital of the National Socialism movement” now objects to this form of commemoration.
Gunter Demnig is a German artist who puts even energetic traveling salesmen to shame. Not a month passes where he isn’t on the road for at least 20 days – year after year. This Berlin native, who lives in Cologne, is neither a traveling singer or an actor on tour − he is an art scholar who also studied design and sculpture.
This 61-year-old is constantly on the road due to his very individual type of sculpture. In more than 300 cities and towns in Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic since 2000, he has installed more than 16,000 cobblestone cubes, each 10 by 10 centimeters, each covered by a brass plate. They are always placed on sidewalks in front of buildings where people who were deported by the Nazi ‘brownshirts’ between 1933 and 1945 lived and worked. Many of those so memorialized were taken to concentration camps and later then murdered. Recently, the Norwegians, Belgians and the French have asked him to extend his work into their countries.
The text, individually engraved onto the ‘bronzed’ brass surface, is intended to recall the individual victims of the Nazis – a murderous gang most Germans willingly followed. One of these impressive memorials in miniature format, for example, reads: “Hans Abraham Ochs, born 1928, lived here. He was killed by the Hitler Youth on Sept. 30, 1936.”
Demnig lays memorial stones, which he calls “stumbling blocks” that passers-by cannot ignore without tripping over their thoughts.
He began doing so in Cologne. Along with the Romani Association, he laid out a colored trail through the city in May of 1990. It led from the homes of Romani and Sinti to the fairgrounds at Köln-Deutz, where an auxiliary camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp was located. In May of 1940, 1,000 Romani and Sinti were deported from the Deutz train station to one of the death camps. It was the last rehearsal for the later deportations of Jews, Demnig says.
He had petitioned to draw this trail in chalk but instead ended up using high quality exterior house paint. Yet even that “eventually vanished.” “For that reason, I hit on the idea of laying out a trail in bronze to mark the deportation stations along the way: the police headquarters, the housing registration bureau, the town halls.” While installing the stations, an older woman – “probably a witness to the events” – had watched him work and said: “But there were never any gypsies who lived here.” That made it clear to Demnig that they lived in a neighborly fashion until 1933 and that no one cared what their neighbor believed in or whether they were gypsies.
It also led him to think about bringing memory to where people lived. This idea was strengthened by his unease at memorial sites, “where people toss wreaths once a year.” Those memorial sites, in addition, were often at overlooked locations and were almost always in the form of abstract memorials. The exceptions were monuments for fallen soldiers, but on them, one found numbing lists of names, all too soon forgotten. From the Talmud, Demnig knew that a person was only truly forgotten when his name escaped the memory of survivors, something that occurred particularly quickly if the name was no longer seen anywhere. That was how he arrived at the idea of the stumbling blocks.
Initially, he planned the art project as a conceptual piece, since he feared it would not be possible to carry it out. In fact, Karl-Heinz Schmid, a respected art critic and editor of the Kunstzeitung, described the project under the title “Art Projects for Europe” – and gave it the subtitle “megalomania.”
It was Kurt Pick, then priest of the Antoniter Church in Cologne, who encouraged him. “Well, you’ll probably never manage six million... but everyone starts at the beginning!” Pick said. Nevertheless, the initial permit process was “extremely complicated” and lasted for almost three years.
In the meantime, everything has become simpler, easier and faster. “In most cities, practically no process is needed anymore,” said Demnig. “The mayor says, ‘we want to do this,’ the political parties agree, and then all is fine.”
But not so in Munich. In Bavaria’s capital, the Jewish religious community of Munich and Upper Bavaria and the city council argue that the dirt of the streets will be carried onto the “stumbling blocks.” That will mean the dead will be walked over – and the dignity of Jewish victims will in this manner yet again be trampled underfoot.
Central Council of Jews in Germany President Charlotte Knobloch, 78, herself a victim of the Holocaust, along with Munich mayor Christian Ude sometimes speak as though they didn’t know that Romani, Sinti, Communists, Socialists, Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and the handicapped were also among the victims of the Nazis.
Demnig says Salomon Korn, vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, had confirmed in writing that the project was explicitly welcome. The office of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority of Israel, had emailed Demnig the message: “It’s a wonderful project!”
Other supporters are of the opinion that Demnig’s orientation, as at Yad Vashem, was in keeping with the prophet Isaiah. In Verse 56: 5 (King James version) it reads: “Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.”
The argument that everyone who wanted to read the inscription on Demnig’s stumbling blocks had to bow down to do so is not accepted by the opponents. Even Josephine R., 69, a retiree who says that “my vision is so poor that if I want to read what it says on such a memorial, I have to kneel down” does not support the opponents of the memorials. She believes that the “capital of the Nazi movement” will become the “capital of opposition to the stumbling blocks.”
Ude has had two of these blocks, donated in 2004 by students of a 10th grade class at the Luisen Gymnasium, removed. They had been installed in front of the house of Paula and Siegfried Jordan, a couple murdered in 1941. They were removed despite the fact that the couple’s now 80-year-old son, who lives in Great Britain, had been highly gratified by this late honor.
Those two stumbling blocks were initially brought to the city’s Jewish cemetery. Now they sit, along with 24 other miniature memorials, at Munich’s Music Conservatory. The sponsors are waiting for the opponents, who are in the minority, to “desist from their intransigence” and finally give victims of the Nazis “an everlasting name that will not disappear.”
Pictures above: Constantly on the road: Gunter Demnig lays his ‘stumbling blocks‘ against forgetting.
Artist Gunter
Demnig has, by now, set 16,000 cobblestones in place, each covered with a brass plate that bears the names of Holocaust victims. Of all places, Munich, once the “capital of the National Socialism movement” now objects to this form of commemoration.
Gunter Demnig is a German artist who puts even energetic traveling salesmen to shame. Not a month passes where he isn’t on the road for at least 20 days – year after year. This Berlin native, who lives in Cologne, is neither a traveling singer or an actor on tour − he is an art scholar who also studied design and sculpture.
This 61-year-old is constantly on the road due to his very individual type of sculpture. In more than 300 cities and towns in Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic since 2000, he has installed more than 16,000 cobblestone cubes, each 10 by 10 centimeters, each covered by a brass plate. They are always placed on sidewalks in front of buildings where people who were deported by the Nazi ‘brownshirts’ between 1933 and 1945 lived and worked. Many of those so memorialized were taken to concentration camps and later then murdered. Recently, the Norwegians, Belgians and the French have asked him to extend his work into their countries.
The text, individually engraved onto the ‘bronzed’ brass surface, is intended to recall the individual victims of the Nazis – a murderous gang most Germans willingly followed. One of these impressive memorials in miniature format, for example, reads: “Hans Abraham Ochs, born 1928, lived here. He was killed by the Hitler Youth on Sept. 30, 1936.”
Demnig lays memorial stones, which he calls “stumbling blocks” that passers-by cannot ignore without tripping over their thoughts.
He began doing so in Cologne. Along with the Romani Association, he laid out a colored trail through the city in May of 1990. It led from the homes of Romani and Sinti to the fairgrounds at Köln-Deutz, where an auxiliary camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp was located. In May of 1940, 1,000 Romani and Sinti were deported from the Deutz train station to one of the death camps. It was the last rehearsal for the later deportations of Jews, Demnig says.
He had petitioned to draw this trail in chalk but instead ended up using high quality exterior house paint. Yet even that “eventually vanished.” “For that reason, I hit on the idea of laying out a trail in bronze to mark the deportation stations along the way: the police headquarters, the housing registration bureau, the town halls.” While installing the stations, an older woman – “probably a witness to the events” – had watched him work and said: “But there were never any gypsies who lived here.” That made it clear to Demnig that they lived in a neighborly fashion until 1933 and that no one cared what their neighbor believed in or whether they were gypsies.
It also led him to think about bringing memory to where people lived. This idea was strengthened by his unease at memorial sites, “where people toss wreaths once a year.” Those memorial sites, in addition, were often at overlooked locations and were almost always in the form of abstract memorials. The exceptions were monuments for fallen soldiers, but on them, one found numbing lists of names, all too soon forgotten. From the Talmud, Demnig knew that a person was only truly forgotten when his name escaped the memory of survivors, something that occurred particularly quickly if the name was no longer seen anywhere. That was how he arrived at the idea of the stumbling blocks.
Initially, he planned the art project as a conceptual piece, since he feared it would not be possible to carry it out. In fact, Karl-Heinz Schmid, a respected art critic and editor of the Kunstzeitung, described the project under the title “Art Projects for Europe” – and gave it the subtitle “megalomania.”
It was Kurt Pick, then priest of the Antoniter Church in Cologne, who encouraged him. “Well, you’ll probably never manage six million... but everyone starts at the beginning!” Pick said. Nevertheless, the initial permit process was “extremely complicated” and lasted for almost three years.
In the meantime, everything has become simpler, easier and faster. “In most cities, practically no process is needed anymore,” said Demnig. “The mayor says, ‘we want to do this,’ the political parties agree, and then all is fine.”
But not so in Munich. In Bavaria’s capital, the Jewish religious community of Munich and Upper Bavaria and the city council argue that the dirt of the streets will be carried onto the “stumbling blocks.” That will mean the dead will be walked over – and the dignity of Jewish victims will in this manner yet again be trampled underfoot.
Central Council of Jews in Germany President Charlotte Knobloch, 78, herself a victim of the Holocaust, along with Munich mayor Christian Ude sometimes speak as though they didn’t know that Romani, Sinti, Communists, Socialists, Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and the handicapped were also among the victims of the Nazis.
Demnig says Salomon Korn, vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, had confirmed in writing that the project was explicitly welcome. The office of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority of Israel, had emailed Demnig the message: “It’s a wonderful project!”
Other supporters are of the opinion that Demnig’s orientation, as at Yad Vashem, was in keeping with the prophet Isaiah. In Verse 56: 5 (King James version) it reads: “Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.”
The argument that everyone who wanted to read the inscription on Demnig’s stumbling blocks had to bow down to do so is not accepted by the opponents. Even Josephine R., 69, a retiree who says that “my vision is so poor that if I want to read what it says on such a memorial, I have to kneel down” does not support the opponents of the memorials. She believes that the “capital of the Nazi movement” will become the “capital of opposition to the stumbling blocks.”
Ude has had two of these blocks, donated in 2004 by students of a 10th grade class at the Luisen Gymnasium, removed. They had been installed in front of the house of Paula and Siegfried Jordan, a couple murdered in 1941. They were removed despite the fact that the couple’s now 80-year-old son, who lives in Great Britain, had been highly gratified by this late honor.
Those two stumbling blocks were initially brought to the city’s Jewish cemetery. Now they sit, along with 24 other miniature memorials, at Munich’s Music Conservatory. The sponsors are waiting for the opponents, who are in the minority, to “desist from their intransigence” and finally give victims of the Nazis “an everlasting name that will not disappear.”
Pictures above: Constantly on the road: Gunter Demnig lays his ‘stumbling blocks‘ against forgetting.