Today, on entering into the waving field of stelae, one is accompanied by light and sky, but the city’ s other sights and sounds are gradually occluded, blocked out. From deep in the midst of the pillars, the thrum of traffic is muffled and all but disappears. Looking up and down the pitching rows of stelae, one catches glimpses of other mourners and beyond them, one can even see to edges of the memorial itself. At the same time, however, one feels very much alone, almost desolate, even in the company of hundreds of other visitors nearby. Depending on where one stands, along the edges or deep inside the field, the experience of the memorial varies— from the reassurance one feels on the sidewalk by remembering in the company of others, invigorated by life of the city hurtling by; to the feelings of existential aloneness from deep inside this dark forest, oppressed and depleted by the memory of mass murder, not reconciled to it.
Where does memory end and history begin here? As so brilliantly conceived by Dagmar von Wilcken, the exhibition-designer for the“ Orte der Information”, this site’ s commemorative and historical dimensions interpenetrate to suggest an interdependent whole, in which neither history nor memory can stand without the other. As one descends the stairs from the midst of the field into the“ Place of Information,” it becomes clear just how crucial a complement the underground“ information center” is to the field of pillars above. It neither duplicates the field’ s commemorative function, nor is it arbitrarily tacked onto the memorial site as an historical after-thought. But rather, in tandem with the field of stelae above it, the place of information reminds us of the memorial’ s dual-mandate as both commemorative and informational, a site of both memory and of history, each as shaped by the other. While remaining distinct in their respective functions, however, these two sides of the memorial are also formally linked and interpenetrating.
Information Center of the Memorial of the Muredered Jews of Europe, designed by Dagmar von Wilcken
By seeming to allow the above-ground stelae to sink into and thereby impose themselves physically into the underground space of information, the underground Information Center audaciously illustrates both that commemoration is“ rooted” in historical information and that the historical presentation is necessarily“ shaped” formally by the commemorative space above it. Here we have a“ place of memory” literally undergirded by a“ place of history,” which is in turn inversely shaped by commemoration, and we are asked to navigate the spaces in between memory and history for our knowledge of events. Such a design makes palpable the Yin and Yang of history and memory, their mutual interdependence and their distinct virtues.
Observing Memories ISSUE 1
12