Contemporary Holocaust Memorials in Berlin: On the Borders of the Sacred and the Profane

Abstract

Berlin’s memorial landscape has been the focus of much international debate and controversy since the German reunification. How to remember the past in a city where nearly every address has its own story to tell — not only of the Holocaust, but also of the brutality of the National Socialist dictatorship and subsequent war, in addition to the scars of the city’s division and the communist regime in the GDR — is a difficult question. Memorial design has become a source of contentious debate in the media and government. By looking at some of those memorials that have been built, installed and dedicated over the last two decades, we can see the emergence of some patterns. One such trend is the increase of memorials that test the boundaries between the sacred and profane and challenge traditional ideas of what makes a memorial a sacred place.