Underlying all of these national memorial
projects, the question remains: What do
monuments and memory have to do with
each other?
New England Holocaust Memorial by Stanley Saitowitz,
erected in 1995 in Boston, MA | Yerevanci
Meanwhile, new national elections were called, a new government coalition was formed
between the SPD and Green Party, and the Denkmal itself had become a political flashpoint.
Eventually, Joshka Fischer (head of the Green Party and eventual Foreign Minister for
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s new government) agreed to join the coalitio n on condition
that the Denkmal be built, after all. Beginning at 9:00 in the morning and running until
after 2:00 in the afternoon on June 25th, 1999, a full session of the German Bundestag
met in public view to debate and finally vote on Berlin’s “Memorial for the Murdered Jews
of Europe.” Both opponents and proponents were given time to make their cases, each
presentation followed by noisy but civil debate. Finally, by a vote of 314 to 209, with 14
abstentions, the Bundestag approved the memorial in four separate parts: 1) the Federal
Republic of Germany will erect in Berlin a memorial for the murdered Jews of Europe on
the site of the former Ministerial Gardens in the middle of Berlin; 2) the design of Peter
Eisenman’s field of pillars (Eisenman-II) will be realized; 3) an information center will be
With this precis in hand, we invited 25 artists and but would be made integral parts of the memorial added to the memorial site; and 4) a public foundation composed of representatives from
architects, of whom 19 submitted designs. From itself. Visitors, we hoped, would not be defeated by the Bundestag, the city of Berlin, and the citizens’ initiative for the establishment of the
these 19, we culled a short-list of two, proposals their memorial obligation here, nor dwarfed by the memorial, as well as the directors of other memorial museums, members of the Central
by Gesine Weinmiller and Peter Eisenman, and memory-forms themselves, but rather enjoined Committee for the Jews of Germany, and other victim groups will be established by the
recommended them to then Chancellor Helmut Kohl, by them to come face to face with memory, able to Bundestag to oversee both the building of the memorial and its information center in the
who favored Eisenman’s design for a waving field remember together and alone. year 2000. Five years later, in May 2005, Germany’s national “Memorial to the Murdered
of stelae. A lively public debate ensued, with the Jews of Europe” was dedicated.
two finalists making public presentations to packed Able to see over and around these pillars, visitors audiences, who eventually formed a consensus would have to find their way through this field of around Peter Eisenman’s “Field of Stelae.” With this stelae, on the one hand, even as they would never public mandate in hand, our Findungskommission actually get lost in or overcome by the memorial act. made an explicit, three-part recommendation to In effect, they will make and choose their own indi- the Bundestag: 1) select Peter Eisenman’s revised vidual spaces for memory, even as they do so col- design for a field of waving stelae; 2) build lectively. The implied sense of motion in the gently underneath it a “place of information” (or historical undulating field also formalizes a kind of memory documentation); and 3) establish a permanent that is neither frozen in time, nor static in space. In “memorial foundation” to support the memorial’s their multiple and variegated sizes, the pillars would building and maintenance. Where the “monumental” be both individuated and collected: the very idea of had traditionally used its size to humiliate or “collective memory” would be broken down here and cow viewers into submission, we believed this replaced with the collected memories of individuals memorial—in its humanly-proportioned forms— murdered, the terrible meanings of their deaths now more difficult job awaited the organizers: Defining exactly what it is to be remembered
would put people on an even-footing with memory. multiplied and not merely unified. The land sways here in Peter Eisenman’s waving field of pillars. What will Germany’s national
Visitors and the role they play as they wade knee-, and moves beneath these pillars so that each one is Holocaust narrative be? The question of the memorial’s historical content began at
or chest-, or shoulder-deep into this waving field of some 3 degrees off vertical: we would not be reas- precisely the moment the question of memorial design ended. Memory, which had
stones would not be diminished by the monumental sured by such memory, but now disoriented by it. followed history, would now be followed by still further historical debate.
Observing Memories
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Information
Center of the
Memorial of the
Muredered Jews
of Europe, de-
signed by Dagmar
von Wilcken
Observing Memories
Was this the end of Germany’s Holocaust memory-work, as I had initially feared?
No, debate and controversy continued unabated. Memorials to other victims of the
Nazi Reich were proposed and built nearby, with the Denkmal becoming one node
in a memorial matrix that would now include memorials to the Sinti and Roma,
homosexuals, and the handicapped and disabled murdered by Hitler’s regime. Moreover,
once the parliament decided to give Holocaust memory a central place in Berlin, an even
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