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Stumble Stones in Germany
April 13, 2013
By Victor Grossman
Portside (April 13, 2013)
a very different kind of memorial ??? the stumble stones
Berlin Bulletin No. 56, April 12,?? 2013
Berlin
The late, late snow has finally disappeared from Berlin???s streets. Visible
once again, here and there, are the ???stumble stones??? ???Stolpersteine in
German ??? with their brief, tragic messages.
Many Berlin tourists will enjoy the night life. They may also look upwards ???
at the giant TV tower, the Brandenburg Gate, at ancient and less ancient
churches. There is a wide assortment of memorial monuments, some impressive,
some uninspiring.
But those who look downward, to the pavement where they walk, may glimpse a
very different kind of memorial ??? the stumble stones.
They are small concrete blocks in the ground, 10 x 10 centimeters
square (about 4 x 4 inches), topped at sidewalk level by a brass plaque of the
same size. Most are placed at entranceways to houses where people once lived
??? people seized by the Nazis and sent to die in a multitude of death sites in
all the conquered territories. Some were suicides. The message on the little
plaque contains a name, a year of birth, the date of deportation and, if known,
the place and date of death. There is room for little else. But the scant facts
can tell a tragic story.
Sometimes there is only one plaque. Often, most movingly, there are two, three,
four or five, placed neatly next to one another. As in Oranienburger Strasse,
for example, near the impressively rebuilt, golden-domed synagogue; a group of
five small squares, all for a family named Kozower, each with a name and year
of birth: Philip, 1894; Gisela, 1901; Eva Rita, 1932; Alice, 1934; Uri Aron,
1942. And under each birth year: ???Deportiert Theresienstadt 1943??? and ???In
Auschwitz ermordet???.
These small memorials are placed wherever local people ??? those now living in
the house, perhaps church groups, anti-fascist organizations, very often
schools ??? decide to hunt up the facts and collect 120 Euros to pay for each
plaque.
Then they can turn to Gunter Demnig, now 66, who had the idea for the stumble
stones, and who makes every block, each and every letter by hand, and who mixes
the concrete, attaches the brass plaque and secures it between the small paving
stones so frequent in German streets. He has recently begun to train two
apprentices to assist him.
Gunter Demnig
Demnig, born in Berlin, became an artist and industrial designer in West
Germany and began work at restoring monuments. Like so many students in those
years he was a political person; he spent some hours in jail for hanging out an
American flag with skulls instead of stars as a protest against the killing in
Vietnam. In 1990 in Cologne he painted a long white line of letters through the
town, forming the words, over and over: ???May 1940 ??? 1000 Roma and Sinti???.
Fifty years earlier this group, the ???Gypsies???, defended by almost no one,
had been forced along this line to the railway station as a test for far larger
deportations soon to follow.
Then, in Cologne in 1995 and a year later in West Berlin, he started his
project of making one stone for each individual, retrieving them from the
anonymity of large memorials visited, all too often, solely on special
occasions. At first he placed the stones without official permission, but
Germany made it legal in 2000 and he was soon called upon by people in one town
and city after another. He has personally placed almost 38,000 such stones in
over 650 German towns and cities, nearly 5000 in Berlin alone, and he has also
been invited to place stones in over a hundred places in the countries
surrounding Germany, as far as Norway and the Ukraine.
Gunter Demnig, in his denim work clothes and broad-brimmed hat, carefully
anchors each stone solidly in the ground. There is always a ceremony, in all
weathers, usually with music and poetry, almost always with flowers, and often
organized by the school classes which did the necessary research - in local
archives or as far as Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Sometimes, rarely, a grateful
grandchild or other surviving relative can be present.
Despite the name, no one stumbles over these stones; they are no higher than
sidewalk level. Asked about this, Demnig likes to quote a schoolboy who once
participated: ???No, no, nobody stumbles and falls, you stumble with your mind
and with your heart.??? Demnig feels that even the bending needed to read the
messages on the stones is, in a way, a symbolic bow of quiet respect to those
whose names he wishes to rescue from forgetfulness.
Above most names are the words:?? ???Here lived?????? and the site is the last
voluntary home of the person named ??? or where the house was once located. But
Demnig also varies the pattern:?? ???Here worked?????? or ???Here studied??? or
???Here taught??? ??? several are near the Humboldt University building on
Berlin???s central Unter den Linden boulevard.
Most stones recall Jewish victims. But some years ago this was broadened to
include, along with Roma or Sinti, homosexuals, Jehovah???s Witnesses or
handicapped victims, also those who fought and died as active anti-fascists.
The names, the locations of the stones, and more biographical notes wherever
possible are now available in Internet. So it is possible to know more about
some names on the stones, now scattered so widely around the country.
For example, we can learn just a little more about two young men from Hoechst
on the Main River. Friedrich Schuhmann, machinist and hobby mandolin player,
was a Communist. The plaque says: Born 1906, fled 1933 to the Saarland, (not
yet German-ruled at the time, VG), 1936 Spanish Civil War, Th??lmann Battalion;
Died July 6 1937, Brunete. We can read that he joined the fight in Spain even
before the International Brigades were formed, and that he was one of fourteen
men who died in that first day???s battle for Brunete. Surviving relatives
learned the facts only through this research.
The other from Hoechst, Fritz Hartmann, born a year earlier, was a Social
Democrat. After two arrests by the Nazis for his resistance he fled in 1933,
also to French-occupied Saarland. When it voted to join Hitler-Germany he fled
to France, continued fighting, but was caught in 1940 and sent to Mauthausen
Concentration Camp. On April 13th 1945, only weeks before war???s end, he was
murdered. The other stones in H??chst, over 50 of them, are for Jewish victims.
Not everyone supports Demnig???s project. In Cologne a court decided to tax the
stones with a severe 19 % value added tax, since the lower 7 % rate is
permitted only for ???creative works??? and the many thousand stones in
Germany, it was ruled, represented mass production. But Demnig could prove that
every plaque, every letter was carved by hand and so was able to win the case.
In Munich a serious objection came from the head of the Jewish Congregation,
who found it ???insufferable??? that the names of Jews killed by the Nazis
should be on plaques over which people walked back and forth every day. Her
objections, though not shared by all Congregation leaders, were backed up by
the mayor, and the stones in Munich, still prohibited on public sidewalks, are
restricted only to private property. A large number are in storage.
But Demnig and many, many others, while they may understand these objections,
are convinced that this way of personalizing the fates of individuals who once
lived at these places, with birthdates and death dates and places, helps to
preserve their memories, while making clear that those who lived here must have
known very well what was happening to their next-door neighbors. They see this
as an urgent reminder for the present, a stimulus to thinking and often
necessary re-thinking.
And indeed, it is not only snow or footsteps which render them temporarily less
legible. Last year, in Greifswald, an area hard hit by neo-Nazis, eleven stones
were torn out and stolen. A few weeks ago in Berlin newly-placed stones were
smeared with tar during the night. Those which disappear are soon replaced and,
as Demnig says, ???With a little benzine and a spatula the tar is gone.??? Red
lacquer was once used. ???I got rid of it with a solvent. Some color remained
in the letters, making them easier to read.???
One night last September in Wismar nine stones were covered over with a steel
plate marked with the birth and death dates, even the rank and decorations of
German Wehrmacht soldiers, some from the most murderous SS divisions. The
struggle with the forces of darkness is by no means a settled affair. Perhaps
these little stones, combined with the efforts and research of pupils in the
schools and people in those houses, will affect this on-going struggle. As the
pupil said, the stumble stones are something for hearts and minds.??
/:b
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