A local council in the eastern town of Heidenau, Germany, led by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, has banned so-called ‘stumbling stone’ memorials dedicated to those killed in the Holocaust and other victims of Nazism.
These memorials, known as ‘Stolpersteine’ in German, are small brass plaques the size of ordinary cobblestones, each engraved with the names of victims, as well as their dates of birth, dates of their deportations, and the place of their deaths.
Funded by donors, they can be found embedded in the pavements of streets in towns throughout Germany and Europe, usually outside of houses and buildings where victims had lived or worked.
Described by the German embassy in Washington D.C. as the world’s largest grassroots Holocaust memorial, with as many as 128,000 plaques having been created, the Stolpersteine project aims “to bring the scale of the Holocaust to a human level and preserve the memory of its victims as survivors pass away.”
Why the ban?
Heidenau, near Dresden, is a town in the east German state of Saxony. Saxony borders the separate state of Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD won a sweeping victory in last month’s state elections.
The AfD have since also won the largest number of seats at the state elections in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, in what was a landmark defeat for German Chancellor Friederich Merz’s governing centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, and have been leading in the polls nationally since April.
Read more: AfD wins Saxony-Anhalt election, first far-right state win in Germany since 1945
Founded in 2013, the AfD are classified as “right-wing extremist” by German intelligence services, and have been accused by Chancellor Merz of being backed by Russia. Until now, they had been kept out of power at the state or federal level due to the other parties’ Brandmauer (firewall) policy, in which they have each agreed not to work with the far-right.
In spite of this policy, CDU council members in Heidenau, along with local civic group the Oberelbe Alliance for More Democracy, supported the AfD in submitting a motion to block the installation of any new Stolpersteine memorials in the town.
The vote on the motion took place on September 24 in a secret ballot, and passed with 13 councillors voting in favour, six opposing, and one abstention.
Representatives from the CDU and the AfD have insisted that the move is not designed to try to erase Germany’s history or the memory of the Nazis’s victims, however. They have instead claimed that they were acting on behalf of residents who felt that plaques embedded in the pavements for passersby to walk on them were not an appropriate form of remembrance.
“We have always regarded these stones as an undignified commemoration,” stated AfD chairman Daniel Barthel. “They can be trampled on both consciously and unconsciously. Dirt and grime fall onto them.”
The council have decreed that future memorials should be restricted to the town’s cemetery, rather than public streets, with discussion around a central memorial dedicated more generally to victims of war and persecution.
The resolution approved by the Council states that the City Council of the City of Heidenau “resolves to integrate or create a commemorative area for the victims of war, terror, dictators, expulsion, and especially National Socialism in Heidenau, preferably within the existing commemorative area of the Heidenau North Cemetery.”
The integration, per the Council, added that integration must be carried out in such a way that directly stepping on commemorative elements is prevented to ensure “dignified remembrance of the victims”.
Erasing history?
Opponents of the move have pointed out that members of the AfD have in the past been critical of other memorials to Nazism and the Holocaust, with its leader in the state of Thuringia, Björn Höcke, having described Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe as a “monument of shame”.
Current AfD co-leader Alice Weidel described Germany’s culture of remembrance as a “cult of guilt,” whilst her predecessor, Alexander Gauland, also stated that Germans should take pride in their soldiers achievements during WW2.
Others in the party have claimed there is too much emphasis on the Nazi period in Germans history education. As a result of such comments, representatives of the AfD have been barred from attending remembrance events such as one held at the former Buchenwald concentration camp.
The Heidenau Council’s decision has drawn outrage in Germany and abroad. Germany’s Education Minister and Deputy Leader of the CDU, Karin Prien, who is of Jewish descent, described the act as “a scandal.” This was echoed by the International Auschwitz Committee, which stated that it was “a transparent and despicable attempt to drive Nazi victims in Heidenau out of the city once again”.
Ron Prosor, the Israeli ambassador to Germany, said that he was “ashamed”, noting that members of his own family are commemorated with Stolpersteine in Berlin. “Every person has a name. A world. A story. It is precisely this memory that is being erased here.”
Holocaust educational program March of the Living has urged Heidenau’s authorities to reverse the decision, calling it “a wake up call”. The group argued that Stolpersteine force people to confront Nazi persecution in the very places where it happened, and that blocking new ones puts political interests ahead of historical truth.
“The Nazis murdered Jews and tried to erase their names, their communities and their place in history. Eighty-one years after the end of the war, elected officials in Germany have voted to prevent more of those names from appearing on the streets where the victims lived.”
What next?
Others have also raised concerns about how meaningful Germany’s supposed firewall policy may be in the face of the AfD’s rising popularity, given the CDU’s support for this motion.
“What is particular here is that in Heidenau, the AfD, a far-right party, voted with the CDU, a center-right conservative party, from which Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz originates,” noted historian Andréas Ullmann. “That is a real break. To my knowledge, such a decision is unprecedented in Germany.”
Gunter Demnig, the German artist who began the Stolpersteine project in the 1990s, has said he is dismayed but not surprised by the ban.
“After the electoral successes of the AfD, something like this was completely expected,” he stated. The CDU, he added, “should maybe drop the C because they have dropped Christianity already.”
Anne Nitschke, a member of citizens educational and anti-racism group, AKuBiZ, has in the meantime stated that she and her team will be intending to launch a legal challenge against the ban.
Featured image: Kadir Celep via Unsplash+
