Hans Scharoon. The site of the greatest crime against
humanity was built over with the most beautiful
architecture for classical music directed by the
world’s most important conductors.
Should music make us
forget crime?
Together with Andreas Knitz, with whom I have
collaborated for over twenty years, I participated in
the competition for the Memorial for the Victims of
National Socialist “Euthanasia” Killings with the
following proposal.
We didn’t want to create a new memorial for the
very first victims of the Holocaust. There was already
Peter Eisenman’s Field of Stelae. We wanted to
take six stelae from this memorial, since the Nazis
murdered sick and disabled people in gas chambers
in six places.
We wanted to mark the empty spaces in the Field
of Stelae with the names of these places (Hadamar,
Grafeneck, Brandenburg, Pirna-Sonnenstein,
Hartheim and Bernburg). We intended to mark the
plot of the former mansion at Tiergartenstraße 4
and raise awareness of the overlap of the plots of the
T4 mansion and the Philharmonic. One of the stelae
would have recalled the site of the killing of the sick
in the foyer of the Philharmonic, thereby to some
extent dedicating the concerts there to the 300,000
Images: Horst Hoheisel & Andreas Knitz, 2012, proposal for the Memori-
al for the Victims of National Socialist “Euthanasia” Killings
victims of the “euthanasia” killings. Of course
though, the Holocaust Memorial is untouchable
and the stunning architecture of the Philharmonic
is listed as a protected monument. Although we
did receive a prize of recognition from the jury, the
realisation of the idea was unthinkable. Manfred
Schneckenburger, who curated documenta 6 and
8, once said to me regarding my memorial ideas:
“Don’t be surprised that your works are so often
eliminated from competitions. You build repudiation
into your own designs!”
However, together with Andreas Knitz I did win
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