To say the least, it’s been a very weird past week. In the midst of Skulptur Projekte, I’ve been distracted by reports, articles, posts, and footage about the events in Charlottesville. Being so far away, I’ve felt weirdly separated from the events and have few answers for Germans who ask me about the events. As I’ve tried to wrap my head around the massive demonstration of racism, hatred, and anti-Semitism across the Atlantic, I can not help but bring Germany into the conversation.
While researching the events in Charlottesville I came across an article published by NPR and entitled How Charlottesville Looks From Berlin (see the link attached at the end of the article). In the article, writer Maggie Penman speaks to the emphasis German culture places on remembering and preserving the darker portions of German history. Penman describes the incredible scale of the Denkmal für die Ermordeten Juden Europas (Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe) as well as the emotional and vast presence of the Stolpersteine or Stumbling Blocks that are scattered throughout the city and mark the last known residence of victims of the Holocaust. All of this, she compares to the small sign located in a parking lot that marks Hitler’s former bunker and the place where he committed suicide. Penman writes that Hitler’s bunker and its location are not lost to history. They are marked and remembered, but there is a stark difference between remembering the bunker and memorializing the murdered Jews of Europe and victims of the Holocaust. One has become somewhat of a pilgrimage site for members of the victims’ families or those who have come to mourn and the other prevents the site from being cemented as a place of hatred. And these memorials are not just in Berlin. In Cologne, Stolpersteine can be located across the city and countless monuments are dedicated to victims of the Gestapo.
In bringing this article or Germany’s relationship to the past, my goal is not to make a direct comparison between the statue of Robert E. Lee and a Nazi landmark such as Hitler’s bunker. Yet it’s hard not to see a similarity between the two situations. As Penman beautifully expresses in her article, “often the argument for preserving Confederate statues and allowing Confederate flags is that we should not forget our history. In Germany, Nazi buildings are extremely hard to come by – nearly all have been destroyed. Yet Germany certainly has not forgotten anything: There’s just a recognition that remembering and memorializing are two different things.” This idea is echoed in an article from Politico Magazine where the author points out that monuments like that of Robert E. Lee allow for neo-Nazi demonstrations. These, for the most part, don’t exist in Germany because the article explains that statues of Adolf Eichmann, Heydrich, or Himmler simply do not exist.
Throughout our time in Germany, one theme that has been prominent is the notion of memory and confronting the past. As is evident from the reflections on documenta14 on this blog site, the theme of confronting, remembering, and challenging the past, in particular the Nazi era and legacy, was prominent both at document and Skulptur Projekte.
Living in a country where a shameful past is confronted daily and where a great effort has been made to distinguish the remembering of the Nazi era versus memorializing those victimized and persecuted has made the events of Charlottesville more frustrating and has shed light on the failure of the United States to properly confront its past through monuments. Especially in a march that featured swastikas and where President Trump did not condemn the event and Angela Merkel’s spokesman described the march “absolutely repulsive” and condemned the “outrageous racism, anti-Semitism and hate in its most despicable form.” This however is a discussion for another time.
Here is the link to the NPR article. http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/08/16/543808019/the-view-of-charlottesville-from-berlin
Here is the link to the Politico article. It provides a great historical comparison of the post-Nazi and post-Civil War years. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/20/why-there-are-no-nazi-statues-in-germany-215510
Raphael Lemkin was the first to use the term genocide, the intentional killing of a group of similar people. Millions of lives have been lost to genocide throughout history. The ideas and opinions of each person lost to genocide is a fundamental loss to humanity. Those who do survive the tortures of genocide, struggle to live their lives and trust humanity.
During World War I, the Ottoman Turks deported and essentially killed over a million Armenians. In 1933 Adolf Hitler initiated the Holocaust. Over the course of twelve unstopped years, Nazi Germany killed over six million Jews and five million Jehovah’s Witnesses, Slavs, disabled, homosexuals, Romas, and more. Khmer Rouge took control of the Cambodian government in 1975 and over the course of four years killed between 1.7 million and 2 million Cambodians. They received little to no help from the international world. In Rwanda in 1994 Hutus killed over 800,000 Tutsis and raped between 250,000 and 500,000 Tutsi women. The Hutus did this in a span of 100 days. The Srebrenica genocide in 1995 killed 8,000 Bosnians after a war that took the lives of over 100,000 Croatian and Bosnian civilians. These are some of the genocides of the twentieth century.
Unfortunately, genocide did not end with the twentieth century. Genocide is an ongoing issue that affects massive numbers of people. Genocide has or is occurring in Sudan, South Sudan, Burma, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Syria, and Iraq. Afghanistan, Burundi, Guinea, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Sri Lanka, and the Ukraine are currently all at risk. Among those lost to acts of genocide are children, dreamers, providers, mothers, fathers, and doctors. Genocide does not end with the deceased. More often than not genocide displaces more than it kills. The number of people displaced puts huge strains on entire regions and becomes a global issue.
Being in Germany has been a strange reminder of this for me as well. Going to Berlin made me think about it the most and living in what the locals refer to as ‘Turkish town’ has only propelled my thoughts.
List of URL References:
http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/genocide/genocide-in-sudan.htm
genocidewatch.net/alerts-2/new-alerts/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/opinion/sunday/the-next-genocide.html?_r=0
http://www.newseuminstitute.org/2016/01/07/in-2016-genocide-is-taking-place-and-it-must-end/
endgenocide.org/will-2015-worst-year-sudan/
studyofgenocide.org/announcements/
This is a reply to both Kellan’s comment and the blog post, which I thoroughly enjoyed:
I was also struck by the honesty and clarity with which Germany addresses it’s complicated and certainly shameful past, and I also thought about it in the context of America’s history. I questioned why America hasn’t confronted it’s history in the same way that Germany has. I personally believe it is because those in power in America are unable to relinquish any of their power or legitimacy to the people and histories who haven’t been given the same amount of power.
This struggle to accept and properly account for national histories because of unequal power dynamics is reflected in contemporary documentary filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer’s film, The Act of Killing (2012). This film focuses on the perpetrators of the Indonesian killings of 1965-66, where almost a million people were killed. Many gangsters who participated in this genocide still hold positions of power and are openly involved in corruption and election rigging. The story of these killings had never been told before Oppenheimer’s film, primarily because the perpetrators have remained in power since. This film tells the tale of constructed and corrupted narratives. Members of society who hold power (traditionally, those in the government) have the ability to chose how history is conveyed to the general public. This gives them immense power over how “factual” information is represented. I think Penman is absolutely correct in stating that “There’s just a recognition that remembering and memorializing are two different things.” Remembering rather than memorializing is going to take a significant amount of thoughtful exertion on behalf of the American government, an effort that the German government wholeheartedly pursued after the end of the war. The removal of memorials and subsequent discussion of how to properly remember the American Civil War and the Confederate States of America is a process that would take a long time, and if done properly, would include voices across diverse groups and communities, not just those in power. This would involve the more powerful member of society relinquishing influence to less recognized members of society, and more importantly, less recognized members of society who they have wronged. This seems nearly impossible for American politicians to do.
I believe this is where contemporary artists come to play, by discovering and exposing new and old systems of power that control the historical narratives. We, too, can take a part in this battle against those in power as viewers. Information is power, and while the government controls a significant amount of how historical information is portrayed, there are artists and filmmakers, as well as many American citizens, who are working to give power to those who traditional historical narratives have ignored.