Politics, space and material: the ‘Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe’ in Berlin as a sign of symbolic representation

Abstract

By understanding the ‘Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe’ as an established sign of political representation the subject of interest here is its relationship to mass media, expert and political communication. In order to ask for the constitution of the symbolic meaning of the memorial via material and communicative strategies, the paper examines three facets of the project. Within these facets the memorial comes into account as a rhetorical idea that is developed into an architectural design, as a proposal within a process of modifications on the object and as a built memorial in time and space. Within these facets communication and the memorial can relate to each other in three different ways: (1) they can intensify each other, (2) they can resist each other, (3) or they can be indifferent. The built memorial as a material object and the imagined still-to-be-built memorial have an important impact on communication and therefore on signification since the very first idea for the memorial's erection.

Keywords:

• Semiotic
• history of art
• memorial
• new political history
• architecture
• memory culture
• iconography

Notes

 1. For a general overview see: Kirsch, Nationaler Mythos oder historische Trauer; Stavginski, Das Holocaust–Denkmal; Mittig, Gegen das Holocaustdenkmal der Berliner Republik; and the first English monograph: Mangos, A Monumental Mockery.

 2. For the connection between political and aesthetic practices and their relation to space and time, see: Rancière, Die Aufteilung des Sinnlichen, 25–34.

 3. For ‘hétérotopies’, irregularity in time and space, see: Foucault, Les hétérotopies, 45–9.

 4. For attendance figures, see: Stiftung Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, “Besucherzahlen und Gruppenbegleitungen.” And for a overview in total numbers: http://www.stiftung-denkmal.de/aktuelles (April 2008).

 5. Among other awards, the memorial was named ‘Best Cultural Space’ by the US magazine Travel and Leisure in 2006.

 6. For both speeches see: http://www.bundesregierung.de/Webs/Breg/DE/Nachrichten/Reden/reden.html (April 2008).

 7. See Ahonen, Tracing the Semiotic Boundaries of Politics.

 8. See, for example, Reuße, Das Denkmal an der Grenze seiner Sprachfähigkeit; Spielmann, Entwürfe zur Sinngebung des Sinnlosen. More specifically related to this topic: Stavginski, Das Holocaust-Denkmal. A study that interweaves questions of political communication and the aesthetic eigenvalue of an object is Brandt, “Von der Kundgebungsmacht zum Denkanstoß.”

 9. Mittig, “Das Denkmal,” 54.

10. The functional definition that Mittig brought into the scholarly research is interesting for the questions of this paper, because the investigation of the memorial as a political sign builds on the difference between form and function. Other important and interesting definitions will not be further discussed in this context.

11. For a recent study see, for example, Tomberger, Das Gegendenkmal, here especially 9ff. and 330ff.

12. Perspektive Berlin, Ein Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, 9.

13. For a detailed overview of the media dispute from 1988 to 2001, see Kirsch, Nationaler Mythos oder historische Trauer, and for the shift from citizen's group to national project especially 83ff.

14. Quoted from: Heimrod, Der Denkmalstreit, 54.

15. On semantic strategies as a means of politics, see: Busse, Historische Semantik.

16. Cf. Protokolle des Deutschen Bundestages, 14. Wahlperiode, 48. Sitzung, June 25, 1999, 4085–4147.

17. Seel, Ästhetik des Erscheinens.

18. On the terms ‘imagined real’ and ‘imagined unreal object’ and their use in the theory of architecture, see Gleiter, “Architektur und das digitale Bild”.

19. Seel, Ästhetik des Erscheinens, 125.

20. Seel, Die Macht des Erscheinens, 143ff.

21. As a consequence of Helmut Kohl's personal intervention in the project, Richard Serra had already left in 1998.

22. Quack, Auf dem Weg zur Realisierung, 147–239.

23. This assumption corresponds with general strategies that Felix Reuße describes for early non-figurative memorials. See Reuße, Das Denkmal an der Grenze seiner Sprachfähigkeit.

24. Gleiter, Architekturtheorie heute.

25. For an introductory insight, see Stiftung Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, Materialien zum Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas.

26. These topics are already familiar from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and from Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

27. Benjamin, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, here especially 11–17.

28. Foucault, Les hétérotopies, 45–9.

29. Examples of important and contradictory positions include Didi-Huberman, Bilder trotz allem; Wajcman, “De la croyance photographique”; Pagnoux, “Reporter photographe à ‘Auschwitz’.”

30. See: Chéroux, “Mémoire des camps.” The exhibition was shown in Paris, Winterthur, Barcelona and Reggio Emilia. For a supplement to the exhibition in Winterthur the articles were translated into German, except for Didi-Huberman's controversially disputed essay. For the contradictory positions see footnote 29.

31. For general questions on material see, Wagner, Das Material der Kunst; and on concrete, see Fuhrmeister, Beton, Klinker, Granit.

32. During recent years a few memorials have been erected that have tried to integrate a dynamic conception of time. This class of memorial is referred to using James E. Young's term of ‘counter-monuments’ (Young, “The Counter-Monument,” 267–97). For a recent study, see Tomberger, Das Gegendenkmal.

33. Among others, see Frankfurter Rundschau, Spiegel Online, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Bild, August 7, 2007.

34. The scandal of the cracks is not the first ‘material scandal’ to occur during the memorial's erection. In 2003 the building work paused on the occasion of a scandal over the use of a supply company to provide material that makes the concrete graffiti-resistant. It was made public that an older wartime subsidiary company of the supply company had produced the poison gas ‘Zyklon B’. From 1942 Zyklon B was used for the mass extermination in gas chambers. These interesting scandals cannot be further investigated in this context but as a short insight one highlight of journalistic investigation on the cracks serves as an example: In January 2008 the German magazine Cicero commissioned an expert opinion on the cracks, and the findings were published in the magazine. They reveal extensive technical faults. The Foundation reacted with an official expert opinion which has not yet been completed.

35. Stegmaier, Eigenschaften von wärmebehandeltem Selbstverdichtendem Beton, 140.

36. Reinhardt, Sachstandsbericht Selbstverdichtender Beton (SVB).

37. Research on structural engineering generally changes very rapidly, an important caveat to any published references. For relatively recent experimental and theoretical investigations, see Wüstholz, Experimentelle und theoretische Untersuchungen der Frischbetoneigenschaften von Selbstverdichtendem Beton.

38. For a ‘Materialikonographie’ and the history of concrete between 1918 and 1945, see Fuhrmeister, Beton, Klinker, Granit, 23–120.

39. See, for example, Hadid and Zaha, Phaeno Science Centre in Wolfsburg, Germany, 2002.