Memorial to Homosexuals persecuted under Nazism
Encyclopedia
Design of memorial
The MemorialMemorial
A memorial is an object which serves as a focus for memory of something, usually a person or an event. Popular forms of memorials include landmark objects or art objects such as sculptures, statues or fountains, and even entire parks....
was designed by artists
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
Michael Elmgreen
Elmgreen and Dragset
Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset are artist-collaborators since 1995 and their work explores the relationship between art, architecture and design....
and Ingar Dragset
Elmgreen and Dragset
Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset are artist-collaborators since 1995 and their work explores the relationship between art, architecture and design....
.
The Cuboid
Cuboid
In geometry, a cuboid is a solid figure bounded by six faces, forming a convex polyhedron. There are two competing definitions of a cuboid in mathematical literature...
is made of 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...
. On the front side of the cuboid is a window, through which visitors can see a short film of two kissing men. The work is the third of its kind in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
following Frankfurter Engel
Frankfurter Engel
Frankfurter Engel is a memorial in the city of Frankfurt am Main in southwestern Germany, dedicated to homosexual people persecuted under Nazi rule, and section 175, the latter during 1950s and 1960s.-Design:...
(1994) in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
and Kölner Rosa Winkel (1995) in Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
.
The memorial was discussed by all parties in 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...
, which granted permission in 2003.
Near the memorial is a signboard, which is written in German and English. There visitors can read over persecutions during Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
and under Paragraph 175
Paragraph 175
Paragraph 175 was a provision of the German Criminal Code from 15 May 1871 to 10 March 1994. It made homosexual acts between males a crime, and in early revisions the provision also criminalized bestiality. All in all, around 140,000 men were convicted under the law.The statute was amended several...
, the law during 1950s and 1960s that outlawed homosexuality. It was reformed in 1969 and fully repealed in 1973.
History of memorial
The homosexual victims of Nazism were not officially recognized after 1945. During 1950s and 1960s, Paragraph 175 was still part of the German penal code.In the 1980s, these "forgotten victims" were finally discussed. In 1985, for instance, president Richard von Weizsäcker
Richard von Weizsäcker
Richard Karl Freiherr von Weizsäcker , known as Richard von Weizsäcker, is a German politician . He served as Governing Mayor of West Berlin from 1981 to 1984, and as President of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1984 to 1994...
remembered homosexuals as a "victim group".
The group Der homosexuellen NS-Opfer gedenken and the organization Lesben- und Schwulenverband
LSVD
Lesben und Schwulenverband in Deutschland is the largest civil rights organisation of homosexuals in Germany....
began promoting a memorial in Berlin in 1993.
On 2003, 12 December, the Bundestag approved erecting a memorial in Berlin at the boundary
Boundary (topology)
In topology and mathematics in general, the boundary of a subset S of a topological space X is the set of points which can be approached both from S and from the outside of S. More precisely, it is the set of points in the closure of S, not belonging to the interior of S. An element of the boundary...
of 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...
(near to Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe , also known as the Holocaust Memorial , is a memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, designed by architect Peter Eisenman and engineer Buro Happold. It consists of a site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae", arranged in a...
). Then the competition for artists started.
Politicians attending the 27 May 2008 dedication included Berlin's Mayor Klaus Wowereit
Klaus Wowereit
Klaus Wowereit is a German politician, member of the SPD , and has been the Mayor of Berlin since the 2001 state elections, where his party won a plurality of the votes, 29.7%. He served as President of the Bundesrat in 2001/02. His SPD-led coalition was re-elected in the 2006 elections...
, President of the Bundestag 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...
, German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann
Bernd Neumann
Bernd Neumann is a German politician.- Biography :Neumann was born in Elbing, East Prussia, now Elbląg, Poland. Following the Flight and Expulsion of Germans after World War II he found refuge in Bremen, West Germany. Neumann studied from 1961 to 1966 at the University of Bremen and later he...
, Volker Beck
Volker Beck
Volker Beck is a German politician. He is a sitting member of parliament for the Green Party in the Bundestag. Beck served as the Green Party Speaker for Legal Affairs from 1994–2002, and as the Green Party whip in the Bundestag since then...
and Renate Künast
Renate Künast
Renate Künast is a German politician who is chairwoman of the Alliance '90/The Greens Bundestag parliamentary group. She was the Minister of Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture from 2001 to 2005...
. Mayor Wowereit held the opening speech for the memorial. Following its dedication, it was frequently vandalized that year.
Discussion
After the competition for an artist, which Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset won, a discussion was held regarding the video, specifically whether to include lesbians kissing. Lesbians victimized under Nazism have not been documented, though there are instances recorded of lesbian pubs in cities like Berlin which were lost. The feministFeminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
magazine EMMA
EMMA (journal)
EMMA is a German feminist magazine. Its print edition is published quarterly.The first issue of EMMA was published on January 26, 1977 with a circulation of about 200,000. Founder of the magazine was Alice Schwarzer who is still publisher and editor-in-chief...
protested that the memorial should also be to persecuted lesbian people.
As result of the discussion, the video will be changed every two years and will also show kissing lesbians.
Literature
- Rüdiger LautmannRüdiger LautmannRüdiger Lautmann is a German sociologist and one of the most prominent LGBT scholars in Germany.- Biography :Born in Koblenz, Lautmann lived during his childhood in Düsseldorf, where he went to school. He studied first German law. After he finished his law studies, he started a second study in...
. Nationalsozialistischer Terror gegen Homosexuelle. Verdrängt und ungesühnt. (together with Burkhard Jellonnek): Paderborn: Schöningh. 2002. ISBN 3-50674-204-3
See also
- History of gay men in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust
- HomomonumentHomomonumentThe Homomonument is a memorial in the centre of Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. It commemorates all gay men and lesbians who have been subjected to persecution because of their homosexuality...
- Memorial to gay and lesbian victims of National SocialismMemorial to gay and lesbian victims of National SocialismThe Cologne memorial dedicated to Den schwulen und lesbischen Opfern des Nationalsozialismus is a monument dedicated to homosexuals, persecuted in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. The monument was inaugurated on June 24, 1995. At that time, it became the second monument of its kind in Germany , and...
- Pink trianglePink triangleThe pink triangle was one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, used to identify male prisoners who were sent there because of their homosexuality. Every prisoner had to wear a downward-pointing triangle on his or her jacket, the colour of which was to categorise him or her by "kind"...