What may just seem
like an ugly grey block is actually one of the most powerful memorials to
genocide.
In the aftermath of WW2, German artists wanted to commemorate the horrors their country had committed. But the problem was that the traditional ‘war monument’ simply would not suffice.
Most monuments commemorate victories or valour or the loss
of a nation’s young heroes. It is rare
for artists to have to commemorate a period of history their country would
rather forget. A period of history where their country slaughtered millions
of others in a genocide.
Furthermore, the Nazi
regime had turned the monument into just another manipulative arm of their
propaganda machine. Monuments under the Nazis were used to show the Reich’s
agenda, to publicise what the Arian race should look like. Artists in post-war
Germany no longer felt figurative art could be used because of the associations
with Nazi statues. The rigidity of monuments and the certainty of a black and
white history are traits that are too closely associated with fascist regimes.
Additionally, it was believed that it was too easy to create
a monument which allowed the public to ‘remember’ an event. How often do we
walk past a monument in the street and genuinely think about what part of
history it represents? Not very often. It seems that with most monuments, by
placing it in a public space, it is as
if we are asking the monument to remember for us, rather than reminding us to
remember ourselves.
So this was the struggle German artists faced in the decades
after the Holocaust. They wanted to create monuments that would actually enable memory rather than
simply becoming another dot on an urban landscape. They also didn’t want to
continue the fascist traditions of huge, heroic, classical statues that force a
particular ideology onto the public.
Artists began to conceptualise ‘counter monuments’ which
challenged the conventional monument. Jewish couple Jochen Gerz and Esther
Shalev-Gerz came up with a solution. In 1986 they unveiled their Monument for Peace and Against War and
Fascism in Harburg-Hamburg. It was a
monument that was designed to force the public to participate, force
passers-by to actively remember what it represented. It was entirely the
opposite of any Nazi Arian sculptures. It could not have been further from
neo-classical heroic statues monumentalising the past.
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This was a monument
which was designed to disappear. Attached to the 12-metre tall lead-coated
column were steel styluses which encouraged people to sign their names or
messages onto the monument. After one and half metre sections were covered, the
column was then lowered into the ground to allow the next session to be
marked. The more actively visitors remembered, the faster the monument would
disappear.
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The final section was lowered into the ground on 10th
November 1993, and the column finally vanished. Today, all that is left is a
burial stone inscribed to ‘Harburg’s Monument against Fascism’ alongside the
original text which read ‘we invite the citizens of Harburg, and visitors to
the town, to add their names here next to ours. In doing so we commit ourselves to remain vigilant… In the end it is
only we ourselves who can stand up against injustice.’
Thus, this memorial reminds us that a statue alone cannot do
the memorialising for us. We cannot simply put up blocks of stone and forget
what they represent. Now that there is nothing left to see apart from this
plaque, the memorial continues to ask us to remember what this empty space
represents. It places the burden of
memory on us, we must remember for ourselves.
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| Showing the progression of the monument |
Unlike the statues of pre-war regimes, this was not a
memorial that aimed to remain fixed and timeless. Statue such as these will
forever be out-dated and detached from the world around them. Memorials that
change demand interaction.
Despite the fact that the pillar is no longer there, it
serves to remind us of the horrors the country witness and also the power that
artists can have on memory.
Based on the
research of James E Young, 'Memory/Monument' in Critical Terms for Art History, ed.
by R Nelson and R Schiff (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 234-247
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