Imagine a huge gray concrete pillar field in the middle of Berlin. Yes, this is not a dream but reality! As an architecture student, this monument, which I know from its photographs, stands before me with a spatial structure beyond my imagination.
In the middle of Berlin lies a field of exactly 2,711 grey concrete pillars, with heights varying from zero to 4 meters. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is a place of remembrance of the Jewish lives lost in the Holocaust. It is also a warning for the future. I think, creating something to symbolize that horror must be very hard for the architect, because of so many controversial. For these reasons, the design process that started in 1988 took a long time and it took eleven years for the project to be implemented due to political reasons and the memorial opened on the 60th anniversary of the end of WWII.
When I first saw an aerial photograph of this monument, I was thinking, how could they allow such a thing? How to put a concrete field in the middle of the city like this! To be honest, at that time, that is, in the second year of my bachelor, I had not done much research about this project. For this reason, I was feeding a great prejudice until I entered the memorial design competition after finishing my bachelor's of architecture. Afterwards, I was really impressed by the idea behind this monument. And I really want to see one day.
On my way to the site, I was curious about how I feel when I arrived. When I arrive the pillars look like concrete coffins from outside. When you get in among the pillars you start to feel lost because of the disorienting experience. The pillars heights change and the ground level rise and falls among them. It is also difficult to hear sounds, as concrete pillars absorb sounds. For this reason, I recommend that you plan a meeting point when you visit the site with someone😊.
Ps. It is also a great and terrifying experience when you enter the site at night.
The architect Peter Eisenman tried to turn the feeling of “being lost in space in time” into the memorial. In an interview video Eisenman shares how he didn’t want to use Jewish symbolism in the memorial, but rather have “a field of otherness, where people understand that to have been a Jew in Germany was ‘other’. And what was it like to be ‘other’ in space in time? And that’s how we came up with the field.” It had nothing to do with the Holocaust symbolically, he explains but was inspired by his conversation with a woman, who had survived Auschwitz. You can watch the video if you want a further explanation from an architectural perspective. Also, you can visit the Eisenmanarchitects website.
( https://eisenmanarchitects.com/Berlin-Memorial-to-the-Murdered-Jews-of-Europe-2005 )
For me, the architect expressed the feeling he wanted to convey in a beautiful language. But to understand that you need to go in and experience.
If I were a kid who did not know the purpose of this monument, I would enjoy the disappearance, maybe I would try to jump over the columns (this is definitely forbidden, do not try) but I couldn't stop wondering and researching why such a huge pile of concrete was in the middle of the city.
You can check a different news about "How should you behave at a Holocaust memorial?" with this link.
I want to complete my writing by making a quote from the website of the architecture office. “In this monument, there is no goal, no end, no working one’s way in or out. The duration of an individual’s experience of it grants no further understanding, since understanding the Holocaust is impossible.”
Hoping not to experience the pains which are impossible to understand, in any part of the world.
I would be very happy if you share your experiences. See you next blog post.
Love from Dessau,
Sanem
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