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By Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper
Most of us would agree on the positive impact of cultural heritage
preservation. Increasing people's awareness of the architectural
assets in their community works to strengthen both social and cultural
identity.
A general acceptance of the value of preservation does not, of
course, preclude conflict over the fate of individual buildings
or sites. Reasons for conflicts can range from financial considerations
to—in more recent architecture—disagreement over a building's
preservation worthiness. However, there are also buildings and sites
that may not be included in local history and because they convey
memories not welcome in mainstream society—memories of events
that some prefer to forget.
Concentration camps are the most obvious examples of such sites.
There are also places that one would not immediately associate with
horrific events—the National Stadium in Santiago, Chile, for
instance, used by the military junta of General Pinochet to imprison,
interrogate, and torture political prisoners in September 1973.
Or the Santa Anita racetrack in Los Angeles, where Japanese Americans
were held for relocation in 1942 following Japan's attack on
Pearl Harbor. And the train station in Montoire-sur-le-Loir, where
Hitler in 1940 shook hands with Pétain, the president of
the French Vichy government, and Pétain, submitting to the
overpowering German forces, promised to collaborate—a promise
kept, especially concerning the deportation of the Jews in France.
All those places were neither built for what happened in them nor
essentially changed by it. There are also buildings that have been
constructed or altered for horrific purposes but then neglected,
partly demolished, reused, or forgotten. Why should such places
be preserved? Is there only memory—or is there substance to
conserve?
Why and How to Preserve
The issue of preserving sites of hurtful memory prompts three fundamental
questions:
Why should places be preserved if they offend the feelings of people
who don't wish to be reminded?
What kind of information do they convey that is not already available
in other forms, such as books, testimonies, film, or videotape?
Why and how should these places be dealt with as material heritage
to be conserved?
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An overview of the National Stadium in Santiago, Chile. Photo: Museum Historico Nacional, Chile. |
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A memorial service for missing dissidents, held at the gates
to the stadium in 1999 on the anniversary of the 1973 military
coup of General Augusto Pinochet. Immediately following the
1973 coup, the stadium—a national sports venuebecame
a detention center for political prisoners. At the stadium,
an estimated 7,000 people were imprisoned, many of them tortured
and/or murdered. According to some official reports, the fate
of more than 1,000 people who disappeared during the Pinochet
regime remains unknown. Photo: AP/Wide World Photos, Roberto
Candia. |
With regard to the first question, we must reflect on the motivation
behind the wish not to be reminded. Is it formulated by victims or their families who cannot or do not want to face the
places where they suffered? Although we might believe that working
through their trauma by revisiting the sites would help, we must
respect their choice not to go, and we must understand their possible
wish to demolish a building as a public statement of liberation.
However, the will to destroy or ignore evidence of a crime in history
is more frequently put forward by those who find themselves on the
side of the perpetrators, feel personally guilty, or feel guilt
by identification. In these cases, it is all the more necessary
to preserve the place as proof against the denial of the events
that we want remembered. In reality, of course, things are often
blurred. Individuals might identify with both victims and perpetrators,
and communities might be uncertain about collective responsibilities.
This is why newly discovered sites of unpleasant memory are often
met by ambivalence, if not by blunt opposition.
In answer to the second question, buildings, sites, and landscapes,
in their shape and material substance, are precious witnesses to
history. They contain answers to questions that we may not have
considered but that our children might. As three-dimensional objects,
they are more complex than a written source, although less easy
to read. And the genius loci—the spirit of the site—is
often hard to describe but doubtlessly perceptible to the open minded,
and it makes people feel that they share past experiences, as if
there were a direct access to history.
The third question points to the problem of how we link historic
events to the material substance of the sites where they happened.
This is easier if the place was created for the purpose we want
to remember—like the Berlin Wall. But even then, a site's
historic function may not be readily apparent. Some authors have
noted their disappointment with the banality of the buildings at
Auschwitz—they do not look evil. People who do not know its
history would not understand. Why, then, should the substance of
such places be protected?
The way out of this paradox is offered by German literary historian
and philosopher Hans Robert Jauss in his theory of reception, which
explains how shifting horizons of understanding permit a modern
interpretation of a historic text. Although written for a definite
purpose, a text does not contain transhistoric messages or questions
to which we should find answers. Instead, it holds answers to questions
that must be formulated by us. With regard to historic events and
the places where they happened, this idea means that we need not
look for an objective connection between site and event nor identify
intrinsic meanings tied to buildings—ones sufficiently explicit
to be understood by an uninformed visitor. The relationship between
site and event exists in our own interpretation of the site. It
is up to us to ask questions. The barracks in Auschwitz or the walls
of the National Stadium in Santiago will answer questions about
what happened there and how. Questions will be diverse, determined
by individual or collectively shared horizons of understanding.
Errors cannot be excluded. Those who do not ask at all will find
nothing. The best didactic presentation remains mute to a public
that does not want to know.
Because there will always be more than one possible interpretation
of a site, the material substance of a place becomes all the more
precious. If we don't care for it now, we might destroy the
evidence for future inquiries. Conservation of banal-looking barracks,
details of surface, principles of construction, or shapes in a landscape
become crucial, no matter how ugly or nice they look. Conservators
need all their skills to deal with places of painful memory.
The Topography of Terror in Berlin
After the Second World War, local authorities in Germany helped
obscure the memory of the Third Reich by demolishing buildings,
by allowing or encouraging redevelopment, or simply by failing to
identify sites publicly. This, we were told, was due to the necessities
of reconstruction and the need to move toward a new future.
Memory and commemoration were concentrated on monuments for dead
soldiers and for bombed-out cities. The deportation and murder of
political prisoners and European Jews were commemorated in former
German concentration camps. Honoring the victims was the main theme
in documentation and sculptural symbolization. But no importance
was attached to smaller places of "minor" horror. With
postwar reconstruction, the topography of numerous towns changed,
and many places were lost—as were traces of local responsibility.
The fact that things were not mentioned for decades does not necessarily
mean that they were easily forgotten. The muteness could be purposeful—a
silence actively maintained through a large expenditure of social
energy.
Things changed in the early 1980s, when local initiatives undertook
research into the day-to-day history of the Third Reich and sought
to tie events to the places where they occurred. Around 1980, in
the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, the upcoming International Building
Exhibition focused attention on a wasteland area on the rim of the
western sector, between Anhalter Strasse, Wilhelmstrasse, and the
Berlin Wall that followed the former Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse (now
Niederkirchnerstrasse). There was nothing visibly horrible there.
One section was occupied by a farm that recycled rubble, and another
by a parking lot; a third section was used by people learning to
drive. The rest of the area was overgrown with weeds and bushes.
It was already known that Gestapo headquarters had been located
in one of the bombed-out and later demolished buildings on the site.
A grassroots initiative conducted more research and found that most
of the Nazi offices that organized political repression, deportation,
terror, murder, and genocide in Europe had been headquartered in
this block in a former arts school, an 18th-century palace, and
several other structures. The buildings were gone, but the memory
was not—and now it could be tied to a place.
The wasteland on the border was no longer empty of meaning. Planned
projects for urban development of the site were halted, and a design
competition for a memorial was held in 1983. The winning design
proposed covering the area with metal plates engraved with enlarged
copies of significant texts out of the archives, the paperwork of
terror, meant to remind visitors of the horrifying work of the "perpetrators
at the desk." The design—considered too big, too violent,
and probably too expensive—was not built.
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The bomb-scarred headquarters of the Nazi
Secret State Police Agency (Gestapo) in July 1945. From 1933
to 1945, the majority of the Nazi offices of terror—the
Gestapo, the SS Reich Leadership, the Security Service of
the SS, and the Reich Security Main Office—were located
in the area of Berlin bounded by Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, Wilhelmstrasse,
and Anhalter Strasse. After the war, little was done to preserve
what remained at the Prinz-Albrecht site, and by the mid-1950s
the offices not destroyed in the war had been demolished.
Photo: William Vandivert, TimePix.
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A 1986 grassroots citizens effort to uncover
the remains of the Nazi offices headquartered at the Prinz-Albrecht
site. This symbolic archaeological act led to professional
excavation at the site, and to the conservation of the Gestapo
headquarters cellars subsequently uncovered. The following
year, in conjunction with Berlin's 750th anniversary, a didactic
walkway was developed and the Topography of Terror
exhibition was installed in an excavated cellar to aid visitors
in interpreting the site. Photo: Paul Glaser.
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Then, in 1986, a totally opposite strategy was brought forth by
participants in the grassroots initiative. Instead of sealing the
earth, they started to look for traces below the surface. The local
administration insisted that nothing could possibly be found, since
their archives indicated that total demolition and a clearing of
rubble down below the level of the cellars had been paid for long
ago. Yet this was obviously not true. A symbolic archaeological
act performed by a mass of people uncovered remains of cellars at
a depth of just 40 centimeters. This was followed by a professional
excavation that discovered the remains of the cellar, which contained
cells built for prisoners brought to Gestapo headquarters for interrogation and torture. The floor and an inner wall of the
original cellar were found, with imprints and remains of the thin
walls that separated the cells. In addition, the excavation uncovered
a row of cellars following the former Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, where
the Berlin Wall had been erected in 1961.
The uncovered walls and floor were professionally conserved and
the area—now an archaeological site—was included in the
program of events commemorating Berlin's 750th anniversary
in 1987. A team of researchers developed a didactic walkway around
the site. Signs told which building stood where, and what happened
there, and gave directions on how to identify places in between
the rubble, pathways, and overgrown vegetation. An exhibition was
mounted in one of the excavated cellars, which was covered by a
provisional shed. Under the title Topography
of Terror, the installation became famous as a new way to
teach history utilizing the site itself without employing additional
visual elements. The exhibition extended far beyond Berlin's
750th anniversary, and today a foundation, which cares for the area
and its visitors, conducts research on the history of Nazi terror—especially
the history of the perpetrators and the sites of repression.
While there is no debate about the meaning of the topography of
terror, controversy has occurred at a secondary level.
In 1988, when the German Historic Museum was still slated to be
built next to the Reichstag, Christian Democratic politicians wanted
to concentrate the presentation of Nazi terror in the new museum's
program and close the Topography of Terror exhibit. At the
same time, relatives of Nazi victims who did not accept this city
wasteland as a commemorative site desired a sculptural memorial.
Still others, among them historic building conservators, said the
archaeological site in the wasteland—an urban scar—was
the best symbol we could ever have.
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An overview of the Topography of Terror open-air exhibition
located in a row of cellars following the former Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse
(top) and a detail (bottom) of one of the exhibit's didactic
displays. In 1997, after the pavilion housing the Topography
of Terror was forced to close, an open-air presentation
of the exhibit was devised until a permanent building could
be constructed. Due to financial constraints, work on the
new building was halted in 2000, and today the project is
in danger of not being completed. Photos: Kristin Kelly and
Florida Center for Instructional Technology, University of
South Florida. |
What was appropriate? This problem arises in all comparable cases.
Every position and opposition must be seriously considered, and
strategies have to be negotiated among all involved parties and
groups; otherwise consensus about the meaning of the place is obscured
by secondary discourse. In this case, the wasteland could be defended
for only a limited time. A competition was held for a new building
that would include the excavation within its structure and create
working spaces for the foundation for research, teaching, and archives.
Swiss architect Peter Zumthor won the competition with a simple-looking,
barn-like design featuring slender beams, high columns of white
concrete, and glass in the spaces between.
The design is no doubt a work of art, conveying the illusion of
modesty reminiscent of medieval Cistercian architecture. But its
construction has proven costly and for that reason work was halted
in 2000. Now, in the summer of 2002, the project is in danger of
becoming overly simplified or perhaps not completed at all. In the
meantime, the Topography of Terror continues to attract about
300,000 visitors each year. It has been integrated into the historic
townscape, and, as a site where history is confronted, it is an
asset that strengthens Berliners' sense of identity and place.
Compared to the complexity of the Topography of Terror,
the remains of the Berlin Wall, still framing the northern rim of
the site, are an easy case. Although the wall was listed as a historic
landmark by the city of Berlin in 1990, its preservation was much
contested during the early 1990s. However, the controversy quickly
died, and now citizens, politicians, and visitors are equally glad
to have in place this architectural trace of what once was the materialization
of the Iron Curtain in the middle of Berlin.
The Club Atlético in Buenos Aires
Somewhat comparable to the Topography of Terror is the Club
Atlético in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This was no sports club,
as the name suggests, but a clandestine detention center built in
1977 by the military government into the cellar of a former warehouse
in the borough of San Telmo, near the center of Buenos Aires. The
detention center's plan shows a row of cells, measuring 1.5
meters by 1.5 meters, with some larger rooms at one end of the building.
The Club Atlético was one of numerous clandestine detention
centers in Buenos Aires and throughout the country where the military
government kept people it suspected of subversive actions or beliefs.
Prisoners were questioned and often tortured and killed; the bodies
of the "disappeared" were frequently thrown into the Rio
de la Plata. It is said that during the 1970s and early 1980s, some
30,000 people disappeared. Their families were told that the arrested
person had changed his or her name, had gone abroad, or started
another life—all lies. The desaparecidos were murdered
by state terrorism, as human rights groups characterize it.
A major aspect of the military government's actions was their
secrecy. Every site of detention had a deceptively euphemistic name,
like the Club Atlético. In 1983 when the military government
was overthrown, there were no corpses or tombs, and little information
about who was arrested and who was killed. Since then, witnesses
have been interviewed, archives built, and memories registered.
The Plaza de Mayo in front of the Government House in Buenos Aires
is a place emblematic of Argentina's independence and republican
tradition; there the mothers of the disappeared demonstrated, always
wearing white head-scarves that became the icon of resistance. It
is a site of memory of national importance, a reminder of resistance.
In 1998, the city of Buenos Aires decided to dedicate an area on
the coast of the Rio de la Plata, next to the University of Buenos
Aires, to the memory of the disappeared. A memorial park would be
created, and a monument with a group of sculptures erected. An international
artists' competition was held, and over 650 sculptors sent
proposals. In September 2001, the first section of the memorial
park opened, and one of the sculptures was dedicatedWilliam
Tucker's Victoria, an abstract reflection on truncated
lives, symbolized by truncated angular forms vaguely reminiscent
of whitened bones.
And yet, despite the significance of the memorial park, it can
be argued that sites like the Club Atlético provide a more
direct connection to the history of the desaparecidos. After all,
the detention center's only purpose was the imprisonment of
people for interrogation and torture. After its relatively brief
use, it was obscured in 1978 by the construction of a freeway, which
was built on columns and today rises high above the street level.
However, even after the construction, the place below where the
building had been was not obliterated from memory. An informal memorial
was put up years agoa large human figure, outlined on an embankment
by metal tubes that can be filled with oil and set on fire to shine
light far into the neighborhood.
A project to search for the remains of the Club Atlético's
cellars began in early 2002. The city commissioned a professional
excavation, and by the end of May 2002, one small part had been
excavated, revealing some walls and floors with the graffiti of
desperate prisoners. The goal of the excavation is to find as much
of the site as possible.
The archaeological campaign is accompanied by research into the
history of sites of imprisonment and torture. Members of human rights groups interview people in the neighborhood about
what they remember of the place—what they saw, heard, and thought.
Neighbors gather below the noisy highway to share memories and to
formulate statements for inscription on a kind of votive wall. Survivors
who had testified early after the end of the military government
are now asked to tell more about the places where they were kept.
The aim is to connect memory and places and to establish a topography
of events based on individual topographies of memory.
History and Identity
The military government in Argentina ended in 1983, not quite 20
years ago. Many families of victims and many survivors and perpetrators
and their families are still there, choosing either to share their
memories or to keep silent. And so the question arises: Will they
all feel better after remembering?
Historians and philosophers have used Freud's term "working
through," which appeared in his article "Erinnern, Wiederholen,
und Durcharbeiten" ("Remembering, repeating, and working
through"), published in 1914. Found in texts on recent history,
especially on the Holocaust, the term suggests a parallel between
individual trauma therapy and collective work on traumatic events
in history. Once a patient has worked through the elements of his
or her traumatic experience and transformed it into a narrative,
the always-present and disturbing experience becomes part of the
past, and the individual can live on with a relieved heart. Similarly,
once a society faces a horrific period in its history—allowing
the truth to be revealed, opening archives for research, marking
sites where things happened, and including the painful memories
in its national or regional narrative—healing seems achievable.
The resemblance is there—and not there, at the same time.
A society will not be unanimous, and different groups will hold
different interpretations of history. (Some would argue that in
the end, the one national narrative is mostly fictional anyway.)
In addition, there is no societal therapist who can help avoid unjust
attacks while questioning the collective attributions of innocence,
guilt, and responsibility. Positions are negotiated in public debate
only.
Even so, public debate on sites of horrific and hurtful events
in history can advance new research and engender new questions regarding
these and other historic sites and monuments. This may rightfully
be called "working through." Still, what comes in the
end? Is it necessary or fruitful to include all hurtful memories
in the mainstream memory of the societies involved? Or do we show
more respect for these persistently ambiguous memories and sites
by keeping them out of the mainstream?
There is no guarantee that anyone will feel comforted after preserving
or visiting a site of hurtful memory. The agonizing experience of
working through may not foster mental liberation. Nevertheless,
we can reasonably maintain that a people's sense of identity
is built not only by affirming the assets of a complex cultural
heritage but also by facing its liabilities and sharing responsibility.
Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper is a conservator of historic buildings
at the Historic Landmarks Preservation Office in Berlin. She was
a guest scholar at the GCI from November 2001 through January 2002.
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