Summary

The du­alisms “re­mem­ber – for­get,” “mem­ory – iden­tity,” and “mem­ory – re­mem­brance” are a re­cent phe­nom­e­non, for in pre­vi­ous cen­turies peo­ple “for­got” what was no longer rel­e­vant or op­por­tune. By con­trast, we today be­lieve the say­ing that “Those who do not know where they come from do not know where they are going.” While a per­son­al­ized form of re­mem­brance hon­or­ing idols or meant to cre­ate them in the first place pre­vailed dur­ing the Kaiser­re­ich and the Weimar Re­pub­lic, this first un­der­went a change in the Weimar pe­riod and par­tic­u­larly after the end of the Sec­ond World War. After the Shoah the “hon­or­ing of he­roes” [Helden­verehrung] (un­der­stood in the sense of an idol) was re­placed by the re­mem­brance of vic­tims. This mainly ap­plies to the cul­ture of re­mem­brance preva­lent in main­stream so­ci­ety, but the Jew­ish mi­nor­ity also re­mem­bers the mur­der of the Jews in var­i­ous ways. Ad­di­tion­ally, they have al­ways pre­served their his­tory in re­li­gious tra­di­tion. Their com­mu­nity re­mem­bers and com­mem­o­rates both as part of their re­li­gious prac­tice and as part of so­ci­ety as a whole.

Mem­ory has al­ways been both pub­lic and pri­vate. Pri­vate mem­ory takes its lead less from his­toric turn­ing points, but from dif­fer­ent phases in one’s own life such as birth, school­ing, mar­riage, reach­ing adult­hood or the loss of close rel­a­tives. If events such as war, star­va­tion, eco­nomic cri­sis or per­se­cu­tion – or pos­i­tive – events such as an eco­nomic boom change the life of an in­di­vid­ual, how­ever, chrono­log­i­cal mark­ers can co­in­cide. Pri­vate mem­ory usu­ally re­mains out­side of the pub­lic realm. Only in some cases does it be­come pub­lic and thus part of the cul­ture of re­mem­brance, through pub­lished fam­ily chron­i­cles or di­aries, for ex­am­ple.

Jewish memory

Ju­daism knows many hol­i­days and com­mem­o­ra­tion days keep­ing the mem­ory of its peo­ple’s his­tory alive, al­though their con­tent and form changed over the mil­len­nia: Passover refers to the Jews’ ex­o­dus from Egypt, mean­ing the end of their en­slave­ment; Sukkot or the Feast of Booths (some­times trans­lated as “Feast of Taber­na­cles”) ac­tu­ally began as a har­vest fes­ti­val and later changed into a com­mem­o­ra­tion of the pe­riod dur­ing which the Jews were wan­der­ing in the desert after their Baby­lon­ian exile; Hanukkah, the Fes­ti­val of Lights, cel­e­brates the reded­i­ca­tion of the Tem­ple while Purim com­mem­o­rates the sav­ing of the Jew­ish peo­ple from Per­sian min­is­ter Haman (356 BCE), who planned to elim­i­nate them.

The five days of fast­ing and mourn­ing, ask­ing for con­tri­tion and re­pen­tance, also have a his­tor­i­cal back­ground, for each one of them stands for a calami­tous event such as a siege, de­feat or ex­pul­sion. While they orig­i­nated as “na­tional days of mourn­ing” com­mem­o­rat­ing the de­struc­tion of the Tem­ple, local cus­toms often at­tached to them. In Ham­burg dur­ing the Weimar pe­riod, for ex­am­ple, a day of fast­ing to com­mem­o­rate the so-​called “Henkeltöpfchen-​Tumult” was es­tab­lished: it re­ferred to anti-​Jewish riots caused by a bro­ken pitcher break­ing out on Au­gust 26, 1730, an event barely present in ei­ther Jew­ish or non-​Jewish mem­ory today. In 1940 lead­ing Jew­ish rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the as­so­ci­a­tion Reich As­so­ci­a­tion of the Jews in Ger­many Re­ichsvere­ini­gung der Juden in Deutsch­land at­tempted to de­clare Oc­to­ber 22 a na­tion­wide day of fast­ing in order to com­mem­o­rate the de­por­ta­tion of Jews from the re­gion of Baden on that day, which was pro­hib­ited by the Na­tional So­cial­ist regime. A year later Ham­burg’s Chief Rabbi Joseph Car­lebach de­clared a re­gional day of fast­ing to com­mem­o­rate the first de­por­ta­tions of Jews from Ham­burg, which was not pre­vented. Today the Is­raeli com­mem­o­ra­tion day Yom HaShoa, which com­mem­o­rates the vic­tims of the Na­tional So­cial­ist mur­der of Jews and Jew­ish re­sis­tance fight­ers, is ob­served by parts of both the Jew­ish and non-​Jewish pop­u­la­tion in Ger­many as well.

In ad­di­tion there are tra­di­tional forms of re­mem­brance such as the week-​long pe­riod of sit­ting shiva after a death in the fam­ily, fu­ner­als, and re­mem­ber­ing the dead by the ob­ser­va­tion of Yahrzeit (also prac­ticed in Chris­tian­ity), mean­ing the rit­u­al­ized re­mem­ber­ing of the dead on the an­niver­sary of their death. One pe­cu­liar fea­ture in Jew­ish ge­neal­ogy is the link­ing of fam­ily his­tory with the his­tory of the Jew­ish peo­ple. Fam­i­lies such as the Sephardic Shealtiels embed their his­tory in the millennia-​old his­tory of the peo­ple of Is­rael, si­mul­ta­ne­ously main­tain­ing fam­ily tra­di­tion and close­ness al­though their fam­ily mem­bers are dis­persed all over the globe. Mean­while other fam­i­lies con­fine them­selves to col­lect­ing sto­ries, pho­tos, fam­ily reg­is­ters, and heir­looms in order to pre­serve the knowl­edge of peo­ple, events, and de­vel­op­ments in fam­ily mem­ory at least for a few gen­er­a­tions.

One of the old­est Jew­ish com­mem­o­ra­tive tra­di­tions sur­viv­ing to the present day re­gard­less of ma­jor­ity so­ci­ety’s chang­ing forms of gov­ern­ment are Memorbücher. They record the names of con­gre­ga­tion mem­bers who died a vi­o­lent death due to their re­li­gion, be it in pogroms, cru­sades or in the Holo­caust. They often also con­tain de­scrip­tions of the events lead­ing to their fate. In her pref­ace to a book com­mem­o­rat­ing the Jews of Schleswig-​Holstein who were mur­dered in the Holo­caust, Miriam Gillis-​Carlebach refers back to the first known Mem­o­r­buch com­piled in Nurem­berg in 1296, for ex­am­ple.

Both pri­vately and as a com­mu­nity, Jews ob­served their own oc­ca­sions for re­mem­brance and com­mem­o­ra­tion through tra­di­tions which in some cases were long-​lived. How­ever, they also par­tic­i­pated and con­tinue to par­tic­i­pate in the com­mem­o­ra­tion days ob­served by main­stream so­ci­ety by join­ing ral­lies or writ­ing ar­ti­cles among other things, and they con­tinue to make their own mark on them. This was true for the Sedan­feiernDay of re­mem­brance for the de­feat of the French army in the Franco-​Prussian War 1870 dur­ing the Kaiser­re­ich, the in­tro­duc­tion of Mother’s Day in 1928, the 1930 cel­e­bra­tions of the “lib­er­a­tion” of the Rhineland, and the erec­tion of memo­ri­als for Jew­ish sol­diers who had fought in the First World War. In the Weimar pe­riod the Volk­strauertag (“Heldenge­denk­tag”) in par­tic­u­lar of­fered an oc­ca­sion to re­mem­ber the Jews who had died in the war. Even after the Na­tional So­cial­ist takeover and until the mid-1930s, it served as an oc­ca­sion to point out the Jew­ish com­mu­nity’s con­tri­bu­tion and sac­ri­fices dur­ing the First World War in speeches de­liv­ered at specif­i­cally Jew­ish “Heldenge­denk­feiern.”

Jews in Ham­burg and else­where honor the mem­ory of promi­nent per­sons (mostly men) from among their ranks in lau­da­tions or ar­ti­cles on the oc­ca­sion of a per­son’s pass­ing or its an­niver­sary. An­other as­pect of Jew­ish mem­ory (hardly dif­fer­ent from Chris­t­ian habits) con­sists in the cel­e­bra­tion of an­niver­saries of foun­da­tions, as­so­ci­a­tions or in­sti­tu­tions, which pro­vide an op­por­tu­nity to high­light de­vel­op­ments and honor achieve­ments.

Jewish memory in the National Socialist period and the treatment of archival material after 1945

After 1933 the Na­tional So­cial­ist state ban­ished all signs of Jew­ish life not only from Ham­burg’s urban topog­ra­phy and so­cial aware­ness. The Jew­ish com­mu­nity again re­acted with a look back at its his­tory. In light of the Na­tional So­cial­ists’ in­creas­ingly ex­ten­sive mea­sures to elim­i­nate all pos­i­tive / hon­or­ing mem­ory of Jew­ish ex­is­tence, the Jew­ish com­mu­nity des­per­ately sought to main­tain, pre­serve, and safe­guard it. Founded in 1905, the “Gesamtarchiv der Juden in Deutsch­land,” as the archive had to call it­self as of 1935, col­lected the files of con­gre­ga­tions, as­so­ci­a­tions, and foun­da­tions as well as reg­is­ters of births, deaths, and ceme­ter­ies and Memorbücher at its Berlin lo­ca­tion. Be­gin­ning in the mid-1930s its di­rec­tor, Jacob Ja­cob­sohn, urged Jews to give ge­nealog­i­cal doc­u­ments and map­pahs, pho­tos of sacral build­ings or rit­ual ob­jects, etc., in short: any­thing telling the story of cen­turies of Jew­ish life in Ger­many to the Gesamtarchiv in Berlin, which he still as­sumed safe. The Gestapo con­fis­cated all its ma­te­r­ial in 1938, and the ge­nealog­i­cal pa­pers were sent to the Re­ichsstelle für Sip­pen­forschung (later re­named Re­ichssip­pe­namt), where they were used to con­firm peo­ple’s “Aryan” ori­gin. Mean­while Ham­burg’s Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion had re­fused to send its pa­pers to Berlin for safe­keep­ing and in­stead con­tin­ued to run its own archive. Thus files doc­u­ment­ing 400 years of Jew­ish life sur­vived Na­tional So­cial­ism and the war. After the war the pre­cur­sor to today’s Cen­tral Archives for the His­tory of the Jew­ish Peo­ple in Jerusalem de­manded the files be sent to Jerusalem since it con­sid­ered them part of Jew­ish his­tory. A law­suit last­ing sev­eral years ended in 1959 with a set­tle­ment ac­cord­ing to which part of the files would re­main in Ham­burg’s State Archive Staat­sarchiv and part of them would be given to the Jerusalem archive while copies of each part would be avail­able in both places. The In­sti­tute for the His­tory of the Ger­man Jews In­sti­tut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden was founded by the city of Ham­burg in 1964 to study these doc­u­ments, and it opened its doors in 1966.

Memory and remembrance in mainstream society

The cul­ture of re­mem­brance has be­come more di­verse in re­cent years: it man­i­fests it­self in urban topog­ra­phy, in the media, and in col­lec­tive and pri­vate mem­ory. More specif­i­cally this means: stat­ues and ar­chi­tec­tural mon­u­ments, the nam­ing of streets, squares and build­ings, memo­ri­als, memo­r­ial walls or plates, trav­el­ing and open air ex­hibits, pub­lic read­ings, de­cen­tral­ized plaques mounted on houses or stum­bling stones Stolper­steine em­bed­ded in the pave­ment, books, on­line ar­ti­cles, and events, the read­ing out of names, marches, and lots more. More tra­di­tional forms of re­mem­brance such as cer­e­monies fea­tur­ing speeches and music con­tinue to exist and are ei­ther com­ple­mented or re­placed by new ones.

The mo­saic vi­su­al­izes the out­line of the for­mer syn­a­goge at Born­platz (today: Joseph-​Carlebach-Platz)
Source: Pic­ture Data­base of the In­sti­tute for the His­tory of the Ger­man Jews, NEU00023, photo: Mar­git Kahl, prob­a­bly 1988, © 2017 Forum for the Es­tates of Artists, Ham­burg.

Tra­di­tion­ally it is de­serv­ing per­sons or im­por­tant events of the past which are re­mem­bered be­cause they are con­sid­ered rel­e­vant to the present and es­sen­tial to the shap­ing of the fu­ture, ei­ther be­cause they imply an as yet to be re­al­ized “sur­plus” (Bloch) such as civil lib­er­ties or be­cause they re­mem­ber an in­jus­tice which must not be for­got­ten or re­peated. In au­thor­i­tar­ian regimes or dic­ta­tor­ships mem­ory is steered from above, and all un­de­sir­able or non­con­form­ing traces of ear­lier cul­tures of re­mem­brance are ei­ther rein­ter­preted or elim­i­nated. In democ­ra­cies such as the Weimar Re­pub­lic, the Fed­eral Re­pub­lic or the cur­rent Berlin Re­pub­lic the processes of re­mem­brance are more plu­ral­is­tic, some­times an­ar­chic and un­syn­chro­nized, and they are ini­ti­ated at both the gov­ern­ment and the grass­roots level. The form which re­mem­brance takes in the pub­lic space is ne­go­ti­ated be­tween its ini­tia­tors and gov­ern­ment ac­tors such as politi­cians or those in charge of gov­ern­ment of­fices and min­istries.

As pre­vi­ously men­tioned, the mem­ory of in­di­vid­u­als, their com­mu­ni­ties, and so­ci­ety at large is sub­ject to con­stant change. It be­comes mod­ern­ized, parts of it fade while oth­ers be­come more im­por­tant. New forms of gov­ern­ment and so­ci­ety cre­ate their own ideals, idols, and oc­ca­sions for com­mem­o­ra­tion. While com­mem­o­ra­tion cer­e­monies can be con­ceived of and cel­e­brated dif­fer­ently, for ar­chi­tec­tural mon­u­ments a change usu­ally means ren­o­va­tion, ad­di­tion, re­lo­ca­tion or even their de­struc­tion. In some cases they sim­ply dis­ap­pear, as an in­ven­tory of cul­tural mon­u­ments in Schleswig-​Holstein has re­cently shown. 3,000 out of 16,000 such mon­u­ments no longer exist Nach Denkmalschutz-​Reform. Er­fas­sung von Denkmälern in SH [Schleswig-​Holstein]: Viele sind ver­schwun­den, in: shz.de, last ac­cess 6/4/2015. in that state be­cause they have been de­mol­ished, built over or re­pur­posed with­out the au­thor­i­ties notic­ing it or any kind of protest against it.

The focus on victims in the culture of remembrance

The “hero wor­ship” [Helden­verehrung] of the 18th and 19th cen­turies – be it for wartime glory, po­lit­i­cal, sci­en­tific, artis­tic or other achieve­ments or for the suc­cess­ful cam­paign­ing for eman­ci­pa­tion and civil lib­er­ties – has be­come a thing of the past not only in Ger­many’s cul­ture of re­mem­brance. After 1945 it was es­sen­tially re­placed by the re­mem­brance of vic­tims in the broad­est sense, i. e. the focus grad­u­ally shifted to “the his­toric in­juries peo­ple suf­fered and which were caused by other peo­ple.” Mar­tin Sabrow, Held und Opfer. Zum Sub­jek­t­wan­del deutscher Vergangenheitsverständigungen im 20. Jahrhun­dert, in: Margrit Fröhlich (ed.), Das Un­be­ha­gen an der Erin­nerung. Wand­lung­sprozesse im Gedenken an den Holo­caust, Frank­furt am Main, 2012, pp. 37–54, here: p. 42. One ef­fect of this change in val­ues was a rapid rise in the num­ber of mon­u­ments in the broad­est sense. An­other was that they are no longer to be found ex­clu­sively in cen­tral lo­ca­tions in the city, but often also in de­cen­tral­ized ones. In light of the unique­ness of the Holo­caust, this “tri­umph of the vic­tim’s per­spec­tive” Ul­rike Ju­reit / Chris­t­ian Schnei­der, Gefühlte Opfer. Il­lu­sion der Vergangenheitsbewältigung, Stuttgart, 2010, p. 10. has come to largely dom­i­nate main­stream so­ci­ety’s re­mem­brance of the Jews’ work, lives, and suf­fer­ing. Today the Holo­caust as a his­tor­i­cal event is uni­ver­sally con­sid­ered a Europe-​wide space of re­mem­brance [“europäischer Gedächtnisort”], which is given a na­tional and re­gional char­ac­ter in each in­di­vid­ual place. The vic­tim’s per­spec­tive is not lim­ited to the vic­tims of per­se­cu­tion, but it ex­tends far into the ranks of per­pe­tra­tors, so that in some cases mur­dered Jews are men­tioned in the same breath as fallen sol­diers of the Sec­ond World War or the vic­tims of Al­lied air raids as “vic­tims of war and tyranny.” Ac­cord­ing to its crit­ics, the focus on vic­tims is not just a sign of a change in val­ues, but it also re­lieves mem­bers of main­stream so­ci­ety of am­biva­lent mem­o­ries and im­plic­itly of­fers to in­clude later gen­er­a­tions. There was a long-​running de­bate about whether a cen­tral mon­u­ment for the mur­dered Jews of Eu­rope should be built in Ger­many. Once it had been re­al­ized, cen­tral mon­u­ments for other vic­tim groups fol­lowed, and – in re­ac­tion to its lo­ca­tion in the cap­i­tal and its im­per­sonal form of re­mem­brance – it was even­tu­ally com­ple­mented by de­cen­tral­ized memo­ri­als such as stum­bling stones Stolper­steine for in­di­vid­u­als, which add names and fates to the num­ber of vic­tims (or cre­ate a con­trast be­tween these).

The remembrance of victims in Hamburg

In Ham­burg, too, mon­u­ments tes­tify to a shift in pri­or­i­ties re­gard­ing the cul­ture of re­mem­brance. The de­stroyed and re­built mon­u­ment to Hein­rich Heine is a case in point. Today it shows a pen­sive Heine, and ex­plana­tory texts refer to the burn­ing of books in 1935 and the de­struc­tion of the first Heine statue. In many cases artis­tic ad­di­tions ex­press the change in so­ci­ety’s val­ues, as is the case with the war memo­r­ial Kriegerdenkmal at Damm­tor train sta­tion. The city com­mis­sioned artist Al­fred Hrdlicka to add two more mon­u­ments to it, which com­mem­o­rate the 1943 fire­bomb­ing of Ham­burg and the mass deaths of Neuengamme con­cen­tra­tion camp pris­on­ers in the bay of Neustadt dur­ing Al­lied bom­bard­ment in 1945. Most streets and squares that had been named for Jews mostly in the Weimar pe­riod have been re­turned to these names, iden­ti­fy­ing their eponyms as sig­nif­i­cant mu­si­cians, ar­chi­tects, bankers or states­men. Other than that, the “hero” has largely fallen out of fash­ion. Mean­while the new cul­ture of re­mem­ber­ing vic­tims is sub­ject to con­stant change and cer­tain trends as well: while nu­mer­ous events were held to re­mem­ber the per­se­cu­tion and mur­der of Jews in the sec­ond half of the 1940s, their num­ber de­clined in the 1950s until it rose again in the 1980s.

Postwar remembrance in Hamburg’s Jewish community

Ham­burg’s Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion re-​established in 1945 de­vel­oped a cul­ture of re­mem­brance that both linked back to the Weimar pe­riod by hon­or­ing de­serv­ing Jew­ish per­son­al­i­ties such as Joseph Car­lebach (cen­ten­nial), Gabriel Riesser (bi­cen­ten­nial) or those who had re­cently passed like Rav Got­thold (died Feb­ru­ary 15, 2009) and also cel­e­brated the an­niver­saries of Jew­ish or­ga­ni­za­tions in de­tailed ac­counts of their found­ing and his­tory (such as the cen­ten­nial of the Jew­ish ceme­tery at Ohls­dorf). In ad­di­tion, three an­nual days of com­mem­o­ra­tion were es­tab­lished which are still ob­served to this day: the an­niver­sary of the No­vem­ber pogrom of 1938, a bus trip to Bergen-​Belsen in­clud­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in a cer­e­mony com­mem­o­rat­ing the lib­er­a­tion of this con­cen­tra­tion camp, and Yom HaShoa re­mem­ber­ing the mur­dered Jew­ish vic­tims. For sev­eral years con­gre­ga­tion mem­bers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives used to travel to Neustadt, where pris­on­ers from the Neuengamme con­cen­tra­tion camp had per­ished in the bay of Lübeck on board the Cap Ar­cona and other ships. They also held an event at the school on Bul­len­huser Damm to re­mem­ber the Jew­ish chil­dren who had been mur­dered in April 1945. The con­gre­ga­tion’s work to re­mem­ber the Shoah was “not meant to open up old wounds, but to pre­vent for­get­ting.” Wal­ter L. Arie Sternheim-​Goral, Festschrift zum 25. Jahrestag der Ein­wei­hung der Syn­a­goge in Ham­burg, 1960–1985, Ham­burg [1985], p. 18..

Memo­r­ial in Hamburg-​Schnelsen for the chil­dren of Bul­len­huser Damm
Source: Wiki­me­dia Com­mons, photo: Hol­ger­jan, pub­lic do­main.

The con­gre­ga­tion was ac­tively in­volved in the cre­ation of memo­ri­als in Schleswig-​Holstein, in­clud­ing a com­mem­o­ra­tive plaque at the for­mer syn­a­gogue in Friedrich­stadt, an ex­hi­bi­tion on Jew­ish life in Elmshorn at the local ceme­tery hall, and the restora­tion of the for­mer syn­a­gogue at Rends­burg. At Ham­burg’s Tal­mud Torah School, it mounted an in­scrip­tion above the por­tal and a com­mem­o­ra­tive plaque in­side the build­ing. Since the 1980s the con­gre­ga­tion has also been a voice in the de­bate about forms of re­mem­brance in the city by crit­i­ciz­ing the memo­r­ial at Moor­weide, which did not in­clude any in­for­ma­tion on the de­por­ta­tions (today there are ex­plana­tory dis­plays), by de­mand­ing some kind of memo­r­ial for the de­stroyed main syn­a­gogue at Born­platz (an art­work based on its floor plan was ded­i­cated in 1988), and by prais­ing the well-​received sculp­ture in front of the for­mer Tem­ple at Oberstraße.

Jewish memory and migration

In the 1980s the num­ber of cel­e­bra­tions in­creased and ref­er­ences changed. In their work with chil­dren and youths, ed­u­ca­tors now in­cluded re­mem­ber­ing east­ern Eu­ro­pean Jewry as “the for­mer cen­ter of Ju­daism,” and new days of com­mem­o­ra­tion were added: one cel­e­brat­ing the found­ing of the state of Is­rael and a day re­mem­ber­ing fallen Is­raeli sol­diers (Yom Hazikaron). Be­gin­ning in 2000, the im­mi­gra­tion of Jews from the for­mer So­viet Union to Ger­many re­sulted in an­other change in the con­gre­ga­tion’s cul­ture of re­mem­brance. There now are an­nual vet­eran’s cel­e­bra­tions dur­ing which Jew­ish for­mer Red Army sol­diers in co­op­er­a­tion with the Russ­ian and Ukrain­ian con­sulates, the Ger­man War Graves Com­mis­sion Kriegsgräberfürsorge, and the As­so­ci­a­tion of Ghetto Sur­vivors Verein der Ghetto-​Überlebenden com­mem­o­rate the de­feat of Na­tional So­cial­ist Ger­many. The con­gre­ga­tion also opened up to re­mem­brance, com­mem­o­ra­tion, and projects ini­ti­ated by the non-​Jewish pub­lic, an­nounce­ments for which could be pub­lished in the con­gre­ga­tion’s newslet­ter. These in­cluded the “march of the Liv­ing” held in Poland to com­mem­o­rate the end of the war, the “Train of Re­mem­brance” Zug der Erin­nerung bring­ing an ex­hi­bi­tion on the fates of de­ported Jew­ish chil­dren to Ham­burg, and a con­fer­ence ti­tled “In­sze­nierung der Erin­nerung” or­ga­nized by the acad­e­mies of Ger­many’s two Chris­t­ian Churches. Con­versely non-​Jewish pa­trons take part in events hon­or­ing con­gre­ga­tion mem­bers such as Arie Goral or Flora and Rudi Neu­mann who are held in high es­teem out­side of the Jew­ish com­mu­nity as well.

Official Forms of remembrance in Hamburg

In the of­fi­cial city re­mem­brance also ini­tially fo­cused on the time pe­riod up to 1938 (the first com­mem­o­ra­tion was held in 1948). Where vic­tims who had died in a con­cen­tra­tion camp were re­mem­bered, in­scrip­tions did not iden­tify those mur­dered as Jews. While an “Urn of the Un­known Con­cen­tra­tion Camp In­mate” Urne des un­bekan­nten Konzentrationärs from Auschwitz was in­stalled in 1945 and in­te­grated into a stele with other urns, only few memo­ri­als were built until the 1960s, few of which ac­tu­ally re­mem­bered Jews and most of them lo­cated in ceme­ter­ies. Since 1965 the Ham­burg sen­ate has reg­u­larly in­vited Jew­ish in­di­vid­u­als who em­i­grated from Ham­burg (yet it only started in­clud­ing Jew­ish and non-​Jewish forced la­bor­ers in 2000). In the mid-1980s, when mayor Klaus von Dohnany de­clared “It is time for the whole truth” “Es ist Zeit für die ganze Wahrheit” (1984), a rapid rise in ac­tiv­i­ties to re­mem­ber and com­mem­o­rate oc­curred as well as a change in their the­matic focus. For his­to­ri­og­ra­phy, too, had long avoided the Holo­caust, and now, ini­ti­ated by non-​university re­searchers and groups and the newly es­tab­lished Geschichtswerkstätten, a de­bate about whether Ham­burg had been a “Muster­gau” dur­ing Na­tional So­cial­ism or rather an oasis largely un­tainted by it un­folded.

Sub­se­quent re­search ini­tially fo­cused on the “for­got­ten vic­tims” be­fore turn­ing to the mur­der of Jews. Now at­ten­tion was paid to in­di­vid­u­als who had been vic­tim­ized and events tak­ing place in spe­cific parts of the city. This re­sulted in new memo­ri­als and forms of re­mem­brance such as walk­ing tours in­form­ing about Jew­ish life and the per­se­cu­tion of Jews in those parts of the city which had not been among Ham­burg’s main Jew­ish neigh­bor­hoods. They also re­mem­bered the life and suf­fer­ing of un­known per­sons. The cul­ture of re­mem­brance now grad­u­ally began to in­clude the Holo­caust, even­tu­ally plac­ing it at the cen­ter of re­mem­brance. It also be­came in­creas­ingly di­verse and in­ter­na­tional. Events com­mem­o­rat­ing the No­vem­ber pogrom are still being held today, but they have changed in char­ac­ter: in­stead of solemn speeches being given in a hall, the Grindel neigh­bor­hood is il­lu­mi­nated by thou­sands of can­dles placed on the stum­bling stones Stolper­steine re­mem­ber­ing the Jews mur­dered in the Holo­caust, and vig­ils and aca­d­e­mic sym­posia are being held.

Square of the de­ported Jews
Source: photo: Beate Meyer, 2006.

In the 1980s Ham­burg’s Au­thor­ity for the pro­tec­tion of his­toric land­marks  Denkmalschutzamt launched a pro­gram of in­stalling com­mem­o­ra­tive plaques: more than 40 of these were mounted on the walls of build­ings of sig­nif­i­cance to the city’s his­tory (blue plaques), the his­tory of per­se­cu­tion and re­sis­tance (black plaques), and sites of Jew­ish life (bronze plaques). Fur­ther com­mem­o­ra­tive plaques were in­stalled and fi­nanced by local and pri­vate ini­tia­tive, most re­cently by art col­lec­tor Peter Hess, who com­mem­o­rates Jew­ish vi­sual artists who had been ex­pelled or mur­dered. Two plaques mounted on the Landungsbrücken bridges ded­i­cated to the refugee ships “St. Louis” and “Ex­o­dus” point out in­ter­na­tional in­volve­ments. In 1939 the first of these ships was not al­lowed to dis­em­bark the 900 Jew­ish refugees on board in Cuba as promised, but in­stead had to take them back to Eu­rope. The Jew­ish DPs on board the “Ex­o­dus” hop­ing to land in Pales­tine in 1947 also were forcibly re­turned.

In the mid- and late 1980s, memo­r­ial stones at “Platz der De­portierten” in Al­tona cre­ated by artist Sol LeWit (com­ple­mented by an ex­plana­tory plaque since the 1990s), a memo­r­ial stone re­mem­ber­ing the Pol­ish Jews de­ported in 1938, and the memo­r­ial in the gate­house of the for­mer con­cen­tra­tion camp at Fuhlsbüttel were ded­i­cated, to name just a few ex­am­ples. New mon­u­ments and memo­ri­als are being erected to the present day, in­clud­ing a 2015 mon­u­ment for the Kinder­trans­porte of 1938 / 39 de­part­ing from the Damm­tor train sta­tion, which re­mem­bers the roughly 1,000 lives of Jew­ish chil­dren from Ham­burg saved by Great Britain.

An ex­hibit com­ple­ment­ing the memo­r­ial at the Neuengamme con­cen­tra­tion camp, where vast num­bers of mostly for­eign Jew­ish and non-​Jewish pris­on­ers were held as forced la­bor­ers and died, was opened only after years of cam­paign­ing (mainly by pris­on­ers’ as­so­ci­a­tions) in 1981, fol­lowed by memo­r­ial stones and memo­ri­als at its satel­lite camps. How­ever, there still was a long way to go until the present memo­r­ial site could be opened in 2005, and it will take even longer for the al­most for­got­ten train sta­tion Han­nover­scher Bahn­hof, from where Ham­burg’s Jews, Sinti, and Roma were de­ported, to be made into the Lohse­platz memo­r­ial.

In con­trast to these cen­tral memo­ri­als, the more than 5,000 stum­bling stones  Stolper­steine (as of 2016) evoke de­cen­tral­ized re­mem­brance in every­day spaces. Art col­lec­tor Peter Hess was re­spon­si­ble for bring­ing this cam­paign by Cologne artist Gunter Dem­nig to Ham­burg. Fi­nanced by a “grass­roots” ef­fort, the stum­bling stones Stolper­steine en­able forms of re­mem­brance rang­ing from a brief si­lence to a solemn oc­ca­sion or an an­nual small cer­e­mony. The bi­o­graph­i­cal re­search that is part of the cam­paign makes it pos­si­ble to give vis­i­bil­ity to in­di­vid­u­als in the mass of vic­tims.

Lay­ing of the 5.000th stum­bling stone Stolper­stein for Bela Feld­heim on March 29, 2016
Source: photo: Beate Meyer, 2016.

The web por­tal www.gedenkstaetten-​in-hamburg.de de­scrib­ing more than 100 mon­u­ments and memo­ri­als as well as ten ed­u­ca­tional sites fea­tur­ing ex­hibits serves as a guide to ex­ist­ing sites of re­mem­brance and com­mem­o­ra­tion in Ham­burg. Out of the changed cul­ture of re­mem­brance and the focus on the Holo­caust grew a strength­ened aware­ness of the sites of per­se­cu­tion and their his­tory. Yet it also re­sulted in ef­forts to pre­serve the rem­nants of the city’s Jew­ish legacy with­out deny­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the Holo­caust. This in­cludes re­cov­er­ing ex­ist­ing mon­u­ments of Jew­ish life as well as cre­at­ing a sense for the “empty spaces” re­sult­ing from Na­tional So­cial­ist de­struc­tion or post­war urban plan­ning. The vir­tual re­con­struc­tion of Jew­ish sites de­vel­oped over the past 20 years, such as the three-​dimensional com­puter vi­su­al­iza­tion of the syn­a­gogue at Born­platz (in the film “Shalom Ham­burg”) of­fers new pos­si­bil­i­ties in this re­gard. The ef­forts to pre­serve Jew­ish her­itage com­bine re­gional and in­ter­na­tional as­pects, as il­lus­trated by stud­ies of Jew­ish ceme­ter­ies or the stages of Jew­ish mi­gra­tion long be­fore 1933 or 1945.

Select Bibliography