Landscape, boundaries, and the limits of representation: The Stolpersteine as a commemorative space

The article discusses the commemorative concept of Gunter Demnig’s ongoing art project Stolpersteine, which is considered one of the world’s largest decentralised Holocaust memorials. Stolper­steine are small, cobblestone-size memorial stones in urban spaces which are dedicated to individual victims...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Volmert, Miriam (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Donner Institute 2017
In: Nordisk judaistik
Year: 2017, Volume: 28, Issue: 1, Pages: 4-21
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Summary:The article discusses the commemorative concept of Gunter Demnig’s ongoing art project Stolpersteine, which is considered one of the world’s largest decentralised Holocaust memorials. Stolper­steine are small, cobblestone-size memorial stones in urban spaces which are dedicated to individual victims of Nazism; it is the project’s aim to install the stones in the pavement in front of an individual’s last-known place of residence. The article aims to analyse the commemorative facets of the project’s spatial dimension in relation to the concept of the ‘residential’. The value of dwelling, presented in Demnig’s­ project as a common ground for the commemoration of all victims as individual citizens, forms a predominant component in public reception. It contributes to a synthesising perception of each stone as being part of a vast commemorative landscape. This landscape, however, is semantically marked by an immanent concept of border, which suggests a polarising separation between included civil spaces and excluded heterotopias. By deviating from the project’s general principles of placement and inscription, certain individual stones render visible this implicit borderline, thereby also critically reflecting on concepts of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’.
ISSN:2343-4929
Contains:Enthalten in: Nordisk judaistik
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.30752/nj.65910