Willi Lammert’s Memorial to the Deported Jews (1953/1985): A Re-thinking of Holocaust Memory in the GDR

• In Event: Holocaust Memory and Memorialization through the Prisms of Race, Apartheid, and Expressionism

Abstract

Eastern German memorials to the Holocaust are often referred to as being Socialist Realist in style, a highly representational approach defined by Stalin in the 1930s, and upholding the ideology of the communist struggle against fascism and capitalism, often depicting workers in heroic fashion. Fritz Cremer’s memorial at Buchenwald (1958) is a case in point. Its highly realistic rendering of workers surging forward in a demonstration uphold Social Realist aims and East German political ideology.

Willi Lammert’s Memorial to the Deported Jews, on Grosse Hamburger Str. in Berlin, however, is an exception. With the newly configured, recently re-opened memorial space around it, the memorial has been overlooked in the literature on Holocaust memorials and deserves closer investigation. Designed in 1953 for a memorial at Ravensbruck, Lammert’s sculpture was not cast and installed until 1985. It is the first Holocaust memorial in the former Eastern Germany that is dedicated to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. It is by far not Social Realist in style – rather, it borrows from German Expressionism in its rendering of human figures. The artist’s markings on the original clay model are visible (contrary to Socialist Realism), and the figures are elongated and downcast – in short, anything but heroic workers. Biographical details about the artist’s life encourage a re-thinking of this memorial and its relationship to other memorials in Eastern Germany. Lammert was married to a Jew, escaped to the Netherlands and France during the war, and returned to Eastern Germany with his wife and two sons in the post-war period. He was later accepted into the national Academy of Art. A re-thinking of Lammert’s memorial contributes to a more nuanced approach to Holocaust memory in the former Eastern Germany.

author

• Natasha Goldman, Bowdoin College