Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe , also known as the Holocaust Memorial (German: Holocaust-Mahnmal), is a memorial in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust

The Holocaust

The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

, designed by architect Peter Eisenman

Peter Eisenman

Peter Eisenman is an American architect. Eisenman's professional work is often referred to as formalist, deconstructive, late avant-garde, late or high modernist, etc...

and engineer Buro Happold

Buro Happold

Buro Happold is a professional services firm providing engineering consultancy, design, planning, project management and consulting services for all aspects of buildings, infrastructure and the environment, with its head office in Bath, Somerset...

. It consists of a 19000 square metres (4.7 acre) site covered with 2,711 concrete

Concrete

Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...

slabs or "stelae

Stele

A stele , also stela , is a stone or wooden slab, generally taller than it is wide, erected for funerals or commemorative purposes, most usually decorated with the names and titles of the deceased or living — inscribed, carved in relief , or painted onto the slab...

", arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The stelae are 2.38 metre long, 0.95 metre wide and vary in height from 0.2 metre. According to Eisenman's project text, the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason. A 2005 copy of the Foundation for the Memorial's official English tourist pamphlet, however, states that the design represents a radical approach to the traditional concept of a memorial, partly because Eisenman did not use any symbolism. An attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims, obtained from the Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i museum

Museum

A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...

Yad Vashem

Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....

.

Building began on April 1, 2003 and was finished on December 15, 2004. It was inaugurated on May 10, 2005, sixty years after the end of World War II, and opened to the public on May 12 of the same year. It is located one block south of the Brandenburg Gate

Brandenburg Gate

The Brandenburg Gate is a former city gate and one of the most well-known landmarks of Berlin and Germany. It is located west of the city centre at the junction of Unter den Linden and Ebertstraße, immediately west of the Pariser Platz. It is the only remaining gate of a series through which...

, in the Friedrichstadt

Friedrichstadt (Berlin)

Friedrichstadt was an independent suburb of Berlin, and is now a historical neighborhood of the city itself. The neighborhood is named after the Prussian king Frederick I.-Geography:...

neighborhood. The cost of construction was approximately €

Euro

The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...

25 million.

The memorial is controversial, and was described by Ignatz Bubis

Ignatz Bubis

Ignatz Bubis , German Jewish leader, was the influential chairman of the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland from 1992 to 1999. In this capacity he led a public campaign against German anti-Semitism...

, the then leader of the German Jewish community, as unnecessary.

History

German journalist Lea Rosh

Lea Rosh

Lea Rosh is a German television journalist, publicist, entrepreneur and political activist. Rosh was the first female journalist to manage a public broadcasting service in Germany and in the 70's the first anchorwoman of Kennzeichen D, a major political television program. She has been a member of...

was the driving force behind the memorial. In 1989, she founded a group to support its construction and to collect donations. With growing support, the Bundestag

Bundestag

The Bundestag is a federal legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag is established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier...

passed a resolution in favour of the project.

First competition

In April 1996 a competition for its design was announced in Germany's major newspapers. Twelve artists were specifically invited to submit a design and given 50,000 DM (€ 25,000) to do so. The only rules and guidelines given were that building the project could only cost up to 15 million DM (€ 7.5 million). The winning proposal was to be selected by a jury consisting of representatives from the fields of art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

, architecture

Architecture

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

, urban design

Urban design

Urban design concerns the arrangement, appearance and functionality of towns and cities, and in particular the shaping and uses of urban public space. It has traditionally been regarded as a disciplinary subset of urban planning, landscape architecture, or architecture and in more recent times has...

, history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

, politics

Politics

Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...

and administration. It included a few minor celebrities such as Frank Schirrmacher

Frank Schirrmacher

Frank Schirrmacher is a German journalist, doctored literature expert and essayist, writer, and since 1994 co-publisher of the national German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.-Education:...

, co-editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , short F.A.Z., also known as the FAZ, is a national German newspaper, founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt am Main. The Sunday edition is the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung .F.A.Z...

. The deadline for the proposals was October 28. On May 11, an information colloquium took place in Berlin, where people interested in submitting a design could receive some more information about the nature of the memorial to be designed. Ignatz Bubis

Ignatz Bubis

, the president of the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland

Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland

The Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland is a federation of German Jews organizing many Jewish organisations in Germany. It was founded on July 19, 1950, as a response to the increasing isolation of German Jews by the international Jewish community and increasing interest in Jewish affairs by the ...

, and Wolfgang Nagel, the construction senator of Berlin, spoke at the event.

Before the deadline, the documents required to submit a proposal were requested over 2600 times and 528 proposals were submitted. The jury met on January 15, 1995 to pick the best submission. First, Walter Jens

Walter Jens

Walter Jens is a German philologist, literature historian, critic, university professor, and writer.In the early 1940s, Jens joined the NSDAP. He denies having applied for membership actively and claims having been forced to join the party...

, the president of the Akademie der Künste

Akademie der Künste

The Akademie der Künste, Berlin is an arts institution in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in 1696 by Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg as the Prussian Academy of Arts, an academic institution where members could meet and discuss and share ideas...

was elected chairman of the jury. In the following days, all but 13 submissions were eliminated from the race in several rounds of looking through all works. As had already been arranged, the jury met again on March 15. 11 submissions were restored to the race as requested by several jurors, after they had had a chance to review the eliminated works in the months in between the meetings. Two works were then recommended by the jury to the foundation to be checked as to whether they could be completed within the price range given. One was designed by a group around the architect Simon Ungers

Simon Ungers

Simon Ungers was a German architect and artist.Simon Ungers was born in 1957 as the son of the architect Oswald Mathias Ungers and Liselotte Gable. In 1969, his family moved to the United States. From 1975 to 1980, he studied architecture at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York...

from Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

; it consisted of 85x85 m square of steel girders on top of concrete blocks located on the corners. The names of several extermination camps would be perforated into the girders, so that these would be projected onto objects or people in the area by sunlight. The other winner was a design by Christine Jackob-Marks. Her concept consisted of 100x100 m large concrete plate, 7 meters thick. It would be tilted, rising up to 11 meters and walkable on special paths. The names of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust would be engraved into the concrete, with spaces left empty for those victims whose names remain unknown. Large pieces of debris from Massada, a mountaintop-fortress in Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

, whose Jewish inhabitants killed themselves to avoid being captured or killed by the Roman soldiers rushing in, would be spread over the concrete plate. These plans would eventually be vetoed by Chancellor Helmut Kohl

Helmut Kohl

Helmut Josef Michael Kohl is a German conservative politician and statesman. He was Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998 and the chairman of the Christian Democratic Union from 1973 to 1998...

.

Peter Eisenman's plan emerged as the winner of the next competition in November 1997. On June 25, 1999, a large majority of the Bundestag decided in favor of Eisenman's plan, modified by attaching a museum, or "place of information," designed by Berlin-based exhibition designer Dagmar von Wilcken. Across the street from the northern boundary of the memorial is the new Embassy of the United States in Berlin

Embassy of the United States in Berlin

The Embassy of the United States in Berlin maintains diplomatic relations and represents United States interests in dealing with the German government. The U.S. Embassy in Germany has not always been in Berlin.-1797–1930:...

, which opened July 4, 2008. For a while, issues over setback for U.S. embassy construction impacted the memorial. Construction of the memorial started in April 2003.

Degussa incident

On October 14, 2003, the Swiss

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

newspaper Tages-Anzeiger

Tages-Anzeiger

Tages-Anzeiger, also abbreviated Tagi or TA, is a German language Swiss national daily newspaper based in Zurich. Among newspapers in Switzerland, it has one of the largest readerships, reaching around 550,000 readers. The Tages-Anzeiger was first published in 1893...

published a few articles presenting as a scandal the fact that the Degussa company was involved in the construction of the memorial producing the anti-graffiti

Graffiti

Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....

substance Protectosil

Protectosil

Protectosil is a silane manufactured by Evonik and marketed a protective coating for building surfaces. It is used as a water repellent, and for corrosion and graffiti control....

used to cover the stelae, because the company had been involved in various ways in the National-Socialist persecution of the Jews. A subsidiary company of Degussa, Degesch

Degesch

The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung mbH , in short Degesch, was a German chemical corporation during World War II. Degesch produced pesticides used against weeds and insects...

, had even produced the Zyklon B

Zyklon B

Zyklon B was the trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide infamous for its use by Nazi Germany to kill human beings in gas chambers of extermination camps during the Holocaust. The "B" designation indicates one of two types of Zyklon...

gas used to poison people in the gas chamber

Gas chamber

A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used...

s. At first these articles did not receive much attention, until the board of trustees managing the construction discussed this situation on October 23 and, after turbulent and controversial discussions, decided to stop construction immediately until a decision was made. Primarily it was representatives of the Jewish community who had called for an end to Degussa's involvement, while the politicians on the board, including Wolfgang Thierse

Wolfgang Thierse

Wolfgang Thierse is a German politician .- Early years in the GDR :Thierse was born in Breslau . He is a Roman Catholic and grew up in East Germany. After his A-levels he first worked as a typesetter in Weimar...

, did not want to stop construction and incur further expense. They also said it would be impossible to exclude all German companies involved in the Nazi crimes, because — as Thierse put it — "the past intrudes into our society". Lea Rosh

Lea Rosh

, who also advocated excluding Degussa, replied that "Zyklon B is obviously the limit." In the discussions that followed, several facts emerged. For one, it transpired that it was not by coincidence that the involvement of Degussa had been publicized in Switzerland

Switzerland

, because another company that had bid to produce the anti-graffiti substance was located there. Further, the foundation managing the construction, as well as Lea Rosh, had known about Degussa's involvement for at least a year but had not done anything to stop it. Rosh then claimed she had not known about the connections between Degussa and Degesch. It also transpired that another Degussa subsidiary, Woerman Bauchemie GmbH, had already poured the foundation for the stelae. The Tages-Anzeiger also reported that Degussa had offered the anti-graffiti substance at a special low price in order to sponsor the memorial. A problem with excluding Degussa from the project was that many of the stelae had already been covered with Degussa's product. These would have to be destroyed if another company were to be used instead. The resulting cost would be about €2.34 million. In the course of the discussions about what to do, which lasted until November 13, most of the Jewish organizations including the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland

Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland

spoke out against working with Degussa, while the architect Peter Eisenman, for one, supported it. On November 13, the decision was made to continue working with the company, and was subsequently heavily criticized. Henryk M. Broder said that "the Jews don't need this memorial, and they are not prepared to declare a pig sty kosher."

On December 15, 2004 the memorial was finished. It was dedicated on May 10, 2005 as part of the celebration of the 60th anniversary of V-E Day

Victory in Europe Day

Victory in Europe Day commemorates 8 May 1945 , the date when the World War II Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Nazi Germany and the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. The formal surrender of the occupying German forces in the Channel Islands was not...

and opened to the public two days later.

It is estimated that some 3.5 million visitors entered the memorial in the first year it was open, or about 10,000 every day. About 490,000 people also visited the underground Information Center, 40% of them non-Germans. The foundation operating the memorial considered this a success; its head, Uwe Neumärker, called the memorial a "tourist magnet". There was also vandalism, however: swastika

Swastika

The swastika is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, in either right-facing form in counter clock motion or its mirrored left-facing form in clock motion. Earliest archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization of Ancient...

s were drawn on the stelae on five different occasions in this first year.

Criticisms

The memorial was the subject of years of controversy in Germany.

The monument has been criticised for only commemorating the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. A monument

Memorial to Homosexuals persecuted under Nazism

The Memorial to Homosexuals persecuted under Nazism in Berlin was opened on 27 May 2008.- Design of memorial :The Memorial was designed by artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset....

to the persons persecuted for their sexual orientation is located across the street in the Tiergarten

Tiergarten

Tiergarten is a locality within the borough of Mitte, in central Berlin . Notable for the great and homonymous urban park, before German reunification, it was a part of West Berlin...

park.

In 1998, German novelist Martin Walser cited the Holocaust Memorial in his speech, when accepting the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade

Peace Prize of the German Book Trade

The Peace Prize of the German Book Trade is an international peace prize given yearly at the Frankfurt Book Fair in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt am Main, Germany...

. In the speech Walser decried the "exploitation of our disgrace for present purposes." He criticized the "monumentalization", and "ceaseless presentation of our shame." And: "Auschwitz is not suitable for becoming a routine-of-threat, an always available intimidation or a moral club [Moralkeule] or also just an obligation. What is produced by ritualisation, has the quality of a lip service"

External links

The Economist: Germany's Jews (Jan. 3, 2008)
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe at Archiplanet
Home page of the project
360° Panorama inside the memorial
The Memorial is at 52.513923°N 13.378344°W
Review in EXBERLINER Magazine
Photographs of the Memorial

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

History

First competition

Degussa incident

Criticisms

See also

External links