Memory and Justice: www.memoryandjustice.org

Design

Design of Monument Against Fascism

Countermonuments are meant not only to commemorate, but also to reflect the memorial’s unfitting nature and memory’s inevitable limitations. The Gerzes felt that monuments themselves tend to have fascistic qualities. Therefore, their monument against fascism would have to be a monument against monuments.

“It is much better to have people talk about a work than to simply do a work yourself, because then the work is part of a public discourse,” Jochen Gerz said in an interview. “A classical work tends to put discussion to rest, whereas if you do works like mine––monuments against fascism or racism in countries like Germany where the issues are so tensely felt––what is important is to keep the discussion going.”

As Esther Shalev-Gerz noted, “During the public existence of the column above the surface, history also altered the situation in Germany: the fall of the Berlin Wall, reunification and the resurgence of neo-nazis, had an effect on political awareness which transformed people's relationship and responses to the column. As a foreign object, perceived by some as an almost aggressive element, the status of the monument changed, becoming a kind of public forum.”

Comment on this article

Related Site

---

References

Young, James. “The Countermonument: Memory against itself in Germany.” In The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning, 27-48. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

Wright, Stephen. Interview with Jochen Gerz. Third Text 18, no. 6 (2004).
External Link

Shalev-Gerz, Esther. “Reflecting spaces / deflecting spaces.”
External Link

---