7/26/2019 aslgdkjh

1/2

Will Neibergall

Field Note 4 (Berlin)

After our class visit to the Reichstag, I walked to the nearby Memorial to the Sinti and

Roma of Europe Murdered under National Socialism. Unlike the famous Memorial to the

Murdered Jews of Europe, which lies just north of this memorial and slightly east of the

Tiergarten, this memorial bears some signage and various inscriptions that designate its purpose

and recall the history of the Porajmos the systematic, genocidal murder by the Nazis of250,000-500,000 people of various cultural identifications loosely grouped under the term Romani,

or Gypsy. These signs and inscriptions run along a wall completely surrounding the memorial,

contributing to a kind of seclusion and simplicity that set it apart from the Memorial to the

Murdered Jews of Europe.

The memorial itself consists of a circular pool of water, at the center of which is a gray,

triangular stone meant to represent the triangular badges worn by prisoners of Nazi

concentration camps. Various stones of different jagged shapes spiral out from the edges of the

pool, becoming larger further away from it. Some of these stones bear the names of camps in

which the Roma and Sinti people were interned. Finally, in metallic letters around the edge of the

pool, a poem called Auschwitz written by a Romani poet and Porajmos survivor is reproduced.

While the memorial is relatively small and visually reserved, its design contributes to a space of

tranquility in which careful meditation on the brutality of Nazi crimes and the vitality of

remembrance is given central functional importance.

In Carriers book chapter on the Monument for the Murdered Jews of Europe as well as

in Wards article, Eisenmanns Cement Graveyard, attention is directed to the political debates

that problematized the conception, design, and execution of the larger and more visually

dramatic memorial just down the street from this one. The former text mentions the influence of

German political interest groups representing the Roma and Sinti communities, which were

instrumental in arguing that Eisenmanns memorial should be narrowed in focus to Jewish

victims of the Holocaust so that another memorial could be built nearby for the murdered

Romani people; Eisenmanns memorial was finally completed in 2005, while Dani Karavans Roma

and Sinti memorial was not officially opened until 2012. Even after the Central Council of

German Sinti and Roma successfully persuaded the German government to commission a

separate memorial, debates in the same vein as those preceding the construction of the Jewish

memorial raged for years around topics like the location of the memorial. Should the memorial

be built in a part of the city historically tied to Roma and Sinti habitation, some asked, or should it

be more centrally located around landmarks like the Tiergarten and the Brandenburg Gate? All of

the same problems related to the form and function of memorialization in public space that wediscussed with regard to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe apply here as well.

Arguably, the debates were more contentious because of the contentious nature of the

relationship between modern Germany and its Romani inhabitants, still largely designated by the

pejorative name Gypsies.

While Im not sold on the idea that this memorial creates meaningful closure it is, after

all, just another excuse for Germans to stop talking about historical atrocities and the problem of

7/26/2019 aslgdkjh

2/2

Will Neibergall

Field Note 4 (Berlin)

potential complicity I found the space itself to be an easier one in which to ponder such

atrocities in public without unwelcome interruption. For example, a sign posted outside the

memorial reminds visitors that playing, smoking, and taking photographs inside the space could

be interpreted by other visitors as disrespectful. Eisenmanns memorial practically invites visitors

to project their own uses and meanings onto it, which accentuates the element of closure and of

moving on without necessarily reckoning with the meaning of history. While I feel that Germany

does not really achieve self-consciousness of the consequences of its project of national identity

in the construction of these memorials, I at least appreciated the quiet place to sit and think. Its

especially important that theres a place to read about the oppressive violence against Romani

people in the middle of a city that, in large part, can still barely stand to see those people huddled

on its street corners begging for change.