Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Stelenfeld size: 19,073 m²
Number of steles: 2,710 (made of concrete)
Area of the exhibition rooms: 800 m²
Total construction costs: EUR 27.6 million (federal funds)
Dimensions of a stele: 0.95 m wide, 2.38 m long, heights from 0 to 4.7 m, inclination from 0.5 ° to 2 °
811 steles with heights of 0.2 to 2 meters, 916 steles with heights of 2 to 3.5 meters and 872 steles with heights of 3.5 to 4.7 meters. 112 steles installed at ground level (construction height 0.2 meters) are located in the edge areas of the stele field and in the public walkway.
Weight of a 4.7m tall stele: About 16 t
Average weight of a stele: About 8 tons
Trees: 41 (including pines, lime trees, antler trees) transition to the zoo
The steles stand on a gently but irregularly lowered site of about 19,000 m². You can immerse yourself in this fully walkable structure from all four sides, the wave-like shape of which is perceived differently from each location.

Architecture is about monuments and tombs, said the architect Adolf Loos at the turn of the 20th century. By that he meant that a human individual can be thought of by a stone, a plaque, a cross or a star. Since the Holocaust, since Hiroshima, since the existence of the mechanism of mass killing, this simple idea no longer applies. Today, an individual can no longer be sure of dying an individual death, and architecture can no longer be reminiscent of life as before. The markings that used to be symbols of an individual death now need to be changed and this has a significant impact on the idea of memory and the memorial. The extent and scale of the Holocaust inevitably make any attempt to represent it by traditional means a hopeless undertaking. The memory of the Holocaust can never be nostalgia.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is in the context of the banal’s enority. The project represents the instability inherent in a system with a seemingly rational structure and the potential for its gradual dissolution. It makes it clear that an ostensibly rational and orderly system loses touch with human reason when it becomes too large and grows beyond its originally intended proportions. Then the seemingly ordered systems begin to uncover their own disturbances and chaos potentials, and it becomes clear that all closed systems must fail with a closed order.

In search of instability in an ostensibly stable system, the design is based on a strict grid of about 2,700 concrete pillars or steles, all 0.95 m wide and 2.38 m long, varying from 0 to 4 m in height. The pillars have a distance of 0.95 m from each other, which allows only individual crossing of the grid. The difference in height between the lower and upper levels of the pillars seems random and inconsequential, as if it were a pure question of expression; However, this is not the case. Each level is determined by the intersections of the empty field with the grid lines of Berlin’s larger urban context. This results in a seemingly faulty shift in the structure of the grid, which causes non-determinable spaces to develop within the seemingly strict order of the monument. The resulting spaces condense, narrow and deepen and open up a multifaceted experience from every point of the field structure. This movement in the field shakes any notion of absolute axiality and instead instead reveals the reality of an all-round orientation. The illusion of order and safety in both the inner axle system and the surrounding road network is thus destroyed.

The idea remains unchanged that the pillars occupy the space between two unfolding grids and thus shape the upper level at eye level. At the same time, the way in which these two systems relate to each other describes a zone of instability. These instabilities or irregularities overlay both the topography of the site and the upper level of the field of the concrete pillars. This creates a perceptible and conceptual divergence between the topography of the terrain and the topography of the stiles surfaces. This divergence denotes a difference in the notion of time, which the philosopher Henri Bergson cites as the difference between chronological, narrative time and time as duration. By reproducing this difference in the conception of the memorial, space is created for loss and contemplation, for elements of memory.

The location of the information is designed in such a way that possible disturbances of the Field of Stelae are minimized. Its mass, weight and density seem to weigh noticeably on the individual and capture it. Through the spatial organization of the place of information, the steles of the Field of Stelae are extended into the place and create a persistent state of reflection and contemplation inside. The steles manifest themselves in the form of a coffered ceiling with ribs, the widths of which correspond to the distance between the steles in the field. The presence of these elements is undermined by the walls, which are designed according to a classic 9-square grid. This grid, directed against the logic of the pillar field, makes any paradigmatic understanding of the arrangement impossible. The resulting frame of reference leads to uncertainty and isolates the individual through a disturbing personal experience. The hard materiality of the concrete structure of the place is juxtaposed with the sequence of a technologically advanced information exhibition, which creates a fleeting dimension of internalization suitable for reflections. The glow of the backlit images and texts is supposed to lead to the dematerialization of the walls of the place, so that the steles seem like a topographical expansion of the Field of Stelae.

In a foresighted moment, Marcel Proust distinguishes two different types of memory in his book “In Search of Lost Time”: nostalgia in the past, connected with a sentimentality that does not remember things as they were, but as we want to remember them, and a living memory, active in the present and free of nostalgia for a remembered past. The Holocaust cannot be remembered with sentimental nostalgia, for the horror of the Holocaust has erased forever the connection of nostalgia and memory. Remembering the Holocaust can only have a living form in which the past remains active in the present.

In this context, the monument tries to develop a new idea of memory that differs markedly from nostalgia. We suggest that the time of the monument, its duration, differs from the time of human experience and understanding. The traditional monument is understood by its symbolic image program, by what it represents. Such a monument is not understood over time, but directly in space; It is seen and understood at the same time. In traditional architecture, such as labyrinths and mazes, there is also a space-time continuum between experience and knowledge: One has the goal of finding your way in and out.

In our monument there is no goal, no end, no way in or out. The time of the experience of the individual does not grant further understanding, because understanding is not possible. The time of the monument, its duration from its upper to its lower end, is separate from the time of its experience. In this context, there is no nostalgia, no memory of the past, only the vivid memory of individual experience. Today we can only understand the past through its manifestation in the present.

(Translation: Dr. Günter Schlusche)

Peter Eisenman was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1932. He studied architecture at Cornell University, Ithaca, then Columbia University, New York, from 1951 to 1955, and graduated with a doctorate on design theory in 1963.

From 1957/58 he worked in various architectural firms, including Walter Gropius’ office “The Architects Cooperative”. Since 1960, Peter Eisenman has taught architecture at Princeton University, New Jersey, Cambridge University, Massachusetts, and at New York’s Cooper Union School, where he taught with John Hejduk. From 1967 to 1982, he led the “Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies”. He was a professor of architecture at the University of Maryland (1978), Harvard University (1982 – 85), Cooper Union School, New York City, and Ohio State University. In his first professional phase he worked with Charles Gwathmay, John Hejduk, Michael Graves and Richard Meier in the architectural group “The New York Five”. Eisenman has developed his design theory principles on the works that were created at the time and published in separate publications.

In the early eighties, Eisenman founded his own architectural practice in New York and has since realized a number of important and wide-ranging designs. This phase is also the subject of his much-acclaimed design for the residential and commercial building on the Koch-/corner of Friedrichstraße in Berlin-Kreuzberg (now the Berlin Wall Museum) as part of the International Building Exhibition Berlin 1987 (IBA). Particularly noteworthy is the sequence of cultural buildings in the USA (Wexner Center for the Visual Arts and Fine Arts Library and Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus/Ohio, as well as Aronoff Center for Design and Art, Cincinnati/Ohio) that were created in the 1980s and 1990s. Another project, realized in 1990, is the headquarters of Koizumi Sangyo Corporation in Tokyo.

Since 1999, Eisenman has had several internationally acclaimed competitive successes. In June 1999, his project for the urban reorganization of the water-front site in Manhattan-West received a prestigious architecture award in the United States. In December 1999, he won first prize in an international competition for his design of a city of culture in Santiago de Compostela (Spain) consisting of the museum, library and opera house, which has been realized since 2002. Another building designed by Eisenman is the University of Phoenix Stadium for 68,000 spectators in Phoenix, Arizona, which opened in 2006.

Since his first journalistic experiences as a co-editor of the architectural-theoretical journal “Oppositions”, Peter Eisenman has continuously dealt with fundamental questions of architecture and design, both as a publicist and as an academic teacher. He holds the Louis Kahn Chair of Architecture at Yale University and is a visiting professor at Princeton University. In 2004, he was awarded the Golden Lion of the Venice Architecture Biennale for his life’s work. The impressive series of publications he has presented, as well as his numerous international academic activities, lectures and honours, make him one of the most interesting architectural personalities of the present day.

In his writings, Eisenman repeatedly deals with the historical content of the modernist project. Within this preoccupation with philosophical questions and basic attitudes, Eisenman’s engagement with the French philosopher Jacques Derrida stands out. A continuous theme of Eisenman’s reflexive activity is his thesis of an architecture of memory, from which he derives the postulate of a site-related or textual architecture that enables the user to have a unique experience of space and time that cannot be conveyed through media. In view of the dichotomy between modernity and fundamentalism that is becoming ever clearer today and the dichotomy between image and reality, Eisenman believes that the role of architecture must also be rethought if it is to survive in the struggle of symbols and stagings and retain a critical function.