Nationwide pogroms

One of the best-​known events in the centuries-​long ex­pe­ri­ence of anti-​Jewish ex­clu­sion and vi­o­lence is part of the back­story to the Na­tional So­cial­ist geno­cide: the na­tion­wide pogroms of No­vem­ber 1938 that be­came known (and in­fa­mous) in­ter­na­tion­ally by their con­tem­po­rary name “(Reichs-​)Kristall­nacht” (Crys­tal Night, Nuit de Crys­tal). These pogroms, which at the time were also re­ferred to as “Re­ichss­cher­ben­woche” [Reich Week of Bro­ken Glass] among other names, marked the most promi­nent event in the Na­tional So­cial­ist per­se­cu­tion of Jews prior to the Sec­ond World War: Jus­ti­fied by its pro­pa­ganda as ret­ri­bu­tion for the as­sas­si­na­tion of a Ger­man diplo­mat in Paris by a young Jew, the Na­tional So­cial­ist regime or­dered at­tacks on Jews and Jew­ish in­sti­tu­tions all over Ger­many. In some places the surge of vi­o­lence al­ready began on No­vem­ber 7, im­me­di­ately after the as­sas­si­na­tion be­came pub­lic, be­fore es­ca­lat­ing na­tion­wide on the night from No­vem­ber 9 to 10, 1938 and con­tin­u­ing for days in some places. More than 30,000 men were trans­ported to con­cen­tra­tion camps, where they were held for weeks or months and mis­treated. Ac­cord­ing to re­cent cal­cu­la­tions, well over a thou­sand Jews fell vic­tim to this out­break of vi­o­lence (this in­cludes sev­eral hun­dred sui­cides as well as at least 500 dead and mur­dered sub­se­quently in the Dachau, Buchen­wald, and Sach­sen­hausen camps). The per­pe­tra­tors, who mostly be­longed to var­i­ous party or­ga­ni­za­tions, de­stroyed a large share of the so­cio­cul­tural in­fra­struc­ture of Jew­ish life in Ger­many – es­pe­cially syn­a­gogues, stores, apart­ments, re­tire­ment homes and or­phan­ages, ceme­ter­ies and schools. Not only due to the ret­ro­spec­tive knowl­edge of Auschwitz must the No­vem­ber pogroms be con­sid­ered the most sig­nif­i­cant turn­ing point for Jew­ish life in Ger­many up to this point.

From “coming to terms with the past” to a “culture of remembrance”

After Ger­many’s lib­er­a­tion from Na­tional So­cial­ism, the treat­ment of the No­vem­ber pogroms was em­bed­ded in more gen­eral ques­tions of guilt, pros­e­cu­tion, mem­ory, fac­ing the past, and learn­ing. The ini­tial phase was marked by in­tense ex­am­i­na­tion of the far-​reaching con­se­quences of the still re­cent “Ger­man cat­a­stro­phe” (Friedrich Mei­necke) – at least among in­tel­lec­tu­als, jour­nal­ists, and artists. The fol­low­ing years saw the found­ing of two Ger­man states and the un­fold­ing of the Cold War and were a pe­riod of sub­dued at­ten­tion to the re­cent past that seemed to be ne­glected po­lit­i­cally and so­cially and some­times even to peter out al­to­gether. In the Fed­eral Re­pub­lic it was not until the late 1950s that the crit­i­cal study of the “Third Reich’s” his­tory and crimes slowly began. While this de­par­ture pri­mar­ily af­fected cer­tain sec­tors of West Ger­man so­ci­ety such as the media, the legal pro­fes­sions, and in­tel­lec­tual and artis­tic cir­cles, at the turn to the 1980s a broader de­bate on how to deal with the Na­tional So­cial­ist pe­riod set in, es­pe­cially in pol­i­tics, churches, labor unions, history-​minded cit­i­zens’ ini­tia­tives, and in acad­e­mia. Ques­tions of com­mem­o­ra­tion, mem­ory and the pol­i­tics of his­tory – be it in his­tor­i­cal places, with re­gard to com­mem­o­ra­tion days, mon­u­ments, films or with a view to po­lit­i­cal con­clu­sions – now in­creas­ingly came to over­shadow the ear­lier ques­tion of “com­ing to terms with the past” (mean­ing de­naz­i­fi­ca­tion, legal pros­e­cu­tion, com­pen­sa­tion and resti­tu­tion). Since then the “cul­ture of re­mem­brance” [Erin­nerungskul­tur] has pro­gres­sively es­tab­lished it­self as a new key term.

The beginnings of a commemorative tradition – the anniversary of the attack on the German Jews

After 1945 there were var­i­ous court cases in which the per­pe­tra­tors of the pogroms were tried, but in the end thou­sands of them were never held re­spon­si­ble. Through­out the fol­low­ing decades the “Re­ich­skristall­nacht,” a still con­tro­ver­sial term due to its seem­ingly triv­i­al­iz­ing con­no­ta­tion, was the only event in the his­tory of anti-​Jewish Nazi per­se­cu­tion that be­came a major, al­beit in­for­mal, po­lit­i­cal day of re­mem­brance in both the Fed­eral Re­pub­lic and the GDR (al­though to a lesser de­gree). Es­pe­cially the 50th an­niver­sary of the pogroms in 1988 was com­mem­o­rated as a spe­cial date in thou­sands of dif­fer­ent events held in both West and East Ger­many. In the last decades a wide-​ranging and het­ero­ge­neous net­work of ini­tia­tives, or­ga­ni­za­tions, gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives, lo­ca­tions and tra­di­tions has formed, and every year around No­vem­ber 9 / 10 its mem­bers en­sure that the mem­ory of the No­vem­ber pogroms is kept alive. Even after Jan­u­ary 27 was in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized as the “Day of Re­mem­brance for the Vic­tims of Na­tional So­cial­ism” in Ger­many in 1996 , com­mem­o­ra­tion of the No­vem­ber pogroms is a per­ma­nent, al­though not for­mally in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized part of the Ger­man cul­ture of re­mem­brance and is up­held by a di­verse spec­trum of both civil­ian and gov­ern­ment ac­tors.

The Synagogue Monument – visualizing a gap

The “Syn­a­gogue Mon­u­ment” by Ham­burg artist Margrit Kahl be­longs among the above-​mentioned, wide-​ranging so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties of re­mem­brance held in 1988. It is also an ex­am­ple of at­tempts made both within the cul­ture of re­mem­brance and the arts to ap­proach this his­tory dif­fer­ently than it had been done in the decades after 1945: crit­i­cally to­wards the per­pe­tra­tors, in sol­i­dar­ity with the vic­tims, ac­tively in­ter­ested in ges­tures of re­mem­brance, with more vis­i­ble re­sults, and more strongly fo­cused on the present. The mon­u­ment’s ded­i­ca­tion was pre­ceded by a slow-​moving phase of con­cep­tual dis­cus­sions, con­flict be­tween dif­fer­ent in­ter­ests as well as pro­cras­ti­na­tion by the local au­thor­i­ties, which lasted for al­most ten years. After it had been pre­sented to the pub­lic by a work­ing group, the Ham­burg sen­ate de­cided in July 1987 to have the project re­al­ized. The mon­u­ment was fi­nally ded­i­cated on No­vem­ber 9, 1988 dur­ing a com­mem­o­ra­tion cer­e­mony. Kahl has de­scribed her work – a com­bi­na­tion of con­cep­tual art and sculp­ture – with these words: “1:1 pro­jec­tion of the for­mer syn­a­gogue’s vaulted ceil­ing lay­out – lev­eled to the ac­tual ground level.” The art­work, in­laid into the ground, was car­ried out – as the black and white pho­to­graph shows – in pol­ished black gran­ite, which traces the vaulted ceil­ing and the build­ing’s floor plan in full scale, and in bro­ken dark gray an­desite fill­ing the spaces in be­tween.

The square called Joseph-​Carlebach-Platz today, which until 1989 was called Born­platz and is shown here from the per­spec­tive of Grindel­hof, the street across from the square, was the lo­ca­tion of the Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion’s main syn­a­gogue, it was built be­tween 1904 and 1906 and could seat up to 1,000 peo­ple. Con­trary to many re­ports, the syn­a­gogue, which was the largest in north­ern Ger­many, was not de­stroyed dur­ing the surge of anti-​Jewish vi­o­lence in No­vem­ber 1938. In this case the per­pe­tra­tors de­filed the syn­a­gogue on the morn­ing of No­vem­ber 10, broke win­dows, dam­aged the in­te­rior and set fire to it the fol­low­ing night (and again two days later). After the Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion had to pay for the 37 me­ters high build­ing’s de­mo­li­tion in 1939 / 1940 and was forced to re­turn the lot to the city, the Na­tional So­cial­ist au­thor­i­ties built a multi-​story air-​raid shel­ter right next to the for­mer lo­ca­tion of the syn­a­gogue, which still ex­ists today and is used by Ham­burg Uni­ver­sity. Until 1986 there was an ad­join­ing park­ing lot.

Con­struc­tion of the air-​raid shel­ter (on the far right of the image) had di­vided Born­platz square in two. Its south­west­ern sec­tion was re­named Al­lende-​Platz by the Eimsbüttel dis­trict au­thor­i­ties in 1983 on the oc­ca­sion of the tenth an­niver­sary of the Chilean pres­i­dent’s death. The other sec­tion, called Born­platz until then, was re­named Joseph-​Carlebach-Platz on re­quest by the Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion in 1989, one year after the memo­r­ial space had been ded­i­cated. It now com­mem­o­rates Ham­burg’s last chief rabbi, who in 1941 was de­ported to the Jungfern­hof con­cen­tra­tion camp near Riga, where he, his wife and three daugh­ters were mur­dered a year later.

Layers of remembrance

Margrit Kahl’s memo­r­ial art­work in a pub­lic space refers to the three his­tor­i­cal lay­ers this place con­tains: to the once most sig­nif­i­cant north­ern Ger­man syn­a­gogue, which was an ar­chi­tec­tural sym­bol for the self-​confidence and equal­ity of Ham­burg’s Jews – and thus to a spe­cial chap­ter in Jew­ish and German-​Jewish his­tory; to the vi­o­lence car­ried out and le­git­imized by the state which led to de­struc­tion, mur­der and ex­pul­sion in this as in many other places; and fi­nally, to the city of Ham­burg’s late ef­forts at re­mem­brance as well as those of its com­mit­ted cit­i­zens to cre­ate a de­mo­c­ra­tic place of re­mem­brance as a sym­bol of per­ma­nent vi­su­al­iza­tion in this his­toric place that was changed from a scene of life to a crime scene.

As an ex­pres­sion of new aesthetic-​artistic con­cep­tions of re­mem­ber­ing the Na­tional So­cial­ist per­se­cu­tion of Jews, the syn­a­gogue mon­u­ment be­longs among the sec­ond phase of such con­cep­tions in the Fed­eral Re­pub­lic. While memo­r­ial stones and plaques were the rule up and down the coun­try dur­ing the first phase that still em­ployed al­most ex­clu­sively tra­di­tional forms, Kahl’s mon­u­ment il­lus­trates a ten­dency emerg­ing since the 1980s which goes be­yond tra­di­tional forms and vir­tu­ally in­ter­venes so­cially and spa­tially. As is usual for such ret­ro­spec­tive dis­tinc­tions of phases, de­vel­op­ments over­lap: on the one hand, there was and con­tin­ues to be a con­ti­nu­ity of tra­di­tional forms – Ham­burg, for ex­am­ple, has re­al­ized an ex­ten­sive pro­gram of memo­r­ial plaques since the 1980s; on the other hand, the new for­mal lan­guage was es­pe­cially in­formed by an in­creased aware­ness, grown out of the gen­er­a­tional change and pub­lic con­tro­ver­sies such as the “His­torik­er­streit” [his­to­ri­ans’ dis­pute] of 1986 / 87, of the rad­i­cal na­ture as well as the sin­gu­lar­ity of vi­o­lent Nazi crimes, which there­fore had to be ex­pressed by other forms ap­pro­pri­ate to the new per­spec­tive on the pe­riod of Na­tional So­cial­ism. “The mon­u­ment to the for­mer syn­a­gogue ren­ders the build­ing it com­mem­o­rates ex­pe­ri­ence­able once again to a de­gree; it is present and ab­sent at the same time.”

The ded­i­ca­tion of the syn­a­gogue mon­u­ment rep­re­sented an im­por­tant step in the process of re­claim­ing and re­viv­ing this once im­por­tant cen­ter of Jew­ish life in Ham­burg’s Grindel quar­ter. With the re­open­ing of the di­rectly ad­ja­cent Joseph-​Carlebach-School, which had been closed in 1942, in­clud­ing the ac­com­mo­da­tion of the Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion’s ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fice in the school build­ing in 2002 as well as the open­ing of Jew­ish cafés and busi­nesses, Jew­ish life re­turned to the Grindel. Margrit Kahl’s “Syn­a­gogue Mon­u­ment” pro­vides a kind of his­toric read­ing aid by vi­su­al­iz­ing the lo­ca­tion and his­tory of the con­gre­ga­tion’s for­mer cen­ter and thus the sad back­story to this most re­cent re­vi­tal­iza­tion in a par­tic­u­larly con­crete way.

A central place of remembrance

“It will de­pend on the viewer whether they ex­pe­ri­ence and per­ceive this place as a hor­ror vacui or a ge­nius loci” – thus Margrit Kahl’s re­sponse to the ques­tion how her mon­u­ment might be in­ter­preted and re­ceived. The un­ob­tru­sive pave­ment mo­saic, some­times called “Ham­burg’s most in­con­spic­u­ous mon­u­ment,” is an “al­most mono­chrome, sub­tle and ab­stract­ing work which en­tirely avoids pathos.”

The mul­ti­ple mean­ings of this place in­clud­ing the his­tory of its re­cep­tion have led to its be­com­ing the cen­tral lo­ca­tion in the city of Ham­burg where the Na­tional So­cial­ist pol­icy of per­se­cu­tion and ex­ter­mi­na­tion is re­mem­bered. The work of re­mem­ber­ing is up­held an­nu­ally by var­i­ous or­ga­ni­za­tions in vig­ils and other events. The pave­ment mo­saic, which is two-​dimensional only on its sur­face, vividly sym­bol­izes key as­pects of Jew­ish, Ger­man, and Ham­burg his­tory: the groundswell of Na­tional So­cial­ist vi­o­lence, the crimes and the losses, and fi­nally the dif­fi­cult and slow re­claim­ing of this epoch by a crit­i­cal cul­ture of re­mem­brance.

What had been de­stroyed, had per­ished and was lost be­cause of the Na­tional So­cial­ist tyranny is shown to later gen­er­a­tions through the means of a mod­ern, com­mis­sioned piece of con­cep­tual art that im­pres­sively re­flects this his­toric wa­ter­shed mo­ment. The his­toric gap (in more than one sense) re­mains vis­i­ble and in fact can be walked in; it was not made to dis­ap­pear by a re­con­struc­tion or a new build­ing (a new syn­a­gogue for Ham­burg’s Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion was built at Hohe Weide be­tween 1958 and 1960), thus al­low­ing mul­ti­ple ways of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing and in­ter­pret­ing it. Mean­while the fact that the Joseph Car­lebach School ad­join­ing the mon­u­ment and the area of Joseph-​Carlebach Platz where the mon­u­ment is lo­cated have to be guarded by the po­lice force around the clock is part of a com­plex historical-​political sit­u­a­tion that is by no means self-​explanatory.

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