They are mostly inconspicuous, but, when your eye is trained to see them, “Stolpersteine” embedded in urban sidewalks in Germany are, at once, ubiquitous and inescapable. These “stumbling stones” are square bronze plates, engraved with letters and dates, inlaid flush to the surface of the concrete underfoot. “Stolpersteine” remember the victims of Nazi persecution. The plates, about four inches square (10 cm x 10 cm), are incised with a name, in some cases a profession, and, then, three dates. The first date is marked “Geboren” (that is, “born”); the second date is labeled “Deportiert” – that is, “deported.” Typically, a third date follows in a column below the “deportation” information; this line is inscribed “Ermordert” (“murdered”) and identifies a concentration camp: Auschwitz, Theresienstadt, Buchenwald, etc. In some instances, the final line on the plaque isn’t quite so dire: some of these victims escaped to the Netherlands or America; “uberlebt” that is “survived”. Several “Stolpersteine” that I inspected end in the word “unbekannt” – this expression usually follows deportations to Riga or some place else in the East and means that no one knows what happened to the person after they were arrested and transported. In several cases, I observed “Stolpersteine” inscribed “Flucht in den Tod” – “fled into death”, an euphemism that means “Selbstmord” or “suicide”. The plates show variations: most begin with the small lettered words: “Hier wohnte” – that is, “Here lived” followed by a name. Some mark locations of executions: “Hier gehenkt” – “Hanged here”. Sometimes additional information is provided although in laconic form: “deprived of rights”, “humiliated”, “imprisoned” and so on. In the case of women, a maiden name is sometimes stated. There is enough variation in the inscriptions to warrant inspection of individual plaques. You have to stoop to read them and, in some cases, foot traffic has blurred the incised letters.
There are about 6500 “Stolpersteine” in Hamburg. Sixty-one thousand of them, give or take a few hundred, are embedded in sidewalks throughout Germany, but, also, in the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, and Finland and other countries where the Nazis murdered people. (In fact, the first of these Stolpersteine were installed in Salzburg in 1997 – the Germans are orderly people and all of them are duly permitted and registered.) Most of the victims are Jews, although some are identified as homosexual, political opponents of the regime, mentally ill and disabled people as well as Romany.
The vast project involving the installation of these memorial markers began with a concept published in 1995 and was initiated by a Cologne artist, Gunter Demnig. The “Stolperstein” are concrete paving blocks with brass plates affixed to the side exposed on the sidewalk. Of course, they require care and maintenance. Non-profit foundations manage the Stolpersteine and detailed registries with additional biographical data are available on-line. The installation of these commemorative plates is ongoing – additional research is underway and new Stolpersteine are always being added to the inventory now existing.
In German, a “Stolpersteine” is a “stumbling block” – that is, idiomatically, a problem that will not go away. Before the Nazis, when someone stumbled or tripped, a German folk expression might be spoken: “A Jew must be buried here.” During the Nazi period, Jewish cemeteries were ripped up and their gravestones pressed into service as part of roads and sidewalks. Accordingly, the Stolpersteine are resonant with many aspects of German language and culture. However, the term phrase “stumbling block” is metaphorical – the plates are pressed flat to the surface of the sidewalk and, in fact, you can’t actually trip over them.
Stolpersteine impressed into the edges or corners of sidewalks don’t weather and retain their “new penny” patina – they shine brightly in the sun. One thinks of coins set on the eyes of corpses. The Stolpersteine are like those coins, obols under the tongue of the dead, or pennies decking the eyelids of a cadaver. They are watchful, but inert, always looking up at you with their penny eyes.
2.
Three Stolpersteine are inset in the sidewalk (“Trottoir”) outside of 3 Heimhuder Strasse where I am staying in Hamburg. I study them closely, squatting to read the words bitten into the brass tablets. The plaques are arrayed in an L-shape on the sidewalk directly leading to the cream-colored townhouse’s front door.
It’s always raining and wet plate-sized maple leaves, pumpkin-colored, are draped over the brass plates. A sodden cigarette butt is embedded in a crack in the cobble-stones next to the plaques. The maple leaves have precise edges and nature has made them elegant and, even, one might say, eloquent, an articulation of autumn with its mists and low-hanging clouds. There are many Stolperstein in the neighborhood, sometimes, groups of five or six in an array at the threshold of restaurants, offices, and boutiques in the neighborhood. At first, I pause to read each one of them.
The 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht falls on the weekend of November 9 and 10. The Stolpersteine now are, indeed, obstacles to be navigated around. Small votive candles are burning next to them and modest bouquets of flowers are strewn on the pavement near the memorials. You can stumble over these improvised memorials and, in fact, some of the candles are broken and there are smears of white wax trodden into the concrete, gobs and skids of the stuff. (Kristallnacht was an organized riot in the Fall of 1938 in which mobs destroyed Jewish stores and left the streets and sidewalks littered with gouts of broken glass.) The votive candles, extinquished by the steady rain or knocked onto their sides, remain on the pavement until Sunday night when they are removed. The scabs of white wax remain on the concrete until washed away by the rain – in some cases, this takes a week. Although human hands must have placed the candles and lit them, and, although people must have removed the wet, wilted flowers and the glass bulbs containing the candles, I never see anyone doing this – it’s as if the candles and the flowers have emerged from the pavement spontaneously, blossoming with orange flickering flame and bright petals for 48 hours and, then, vanishing.
3.
After the anniversary of Kristallnacht, I am less attentive to the Stolpersteine. Habit and custom have dulled my apprehension of the memorial plaques. At the end of my month in Hamburg, I can scarcely see them at all. People pass over the brass inscriptions heedlessly – after all, they are made to be walked upon. In some places, rubbish accumulates around them. A beer bottle is broken near some Stolpersteine on a street nearby and shards of glass bracket them, and rasp under foot. Of course, there are wandering dogs. It takes an inquiring eye to activate them, to bring the inscriptions to life and, after a while, the eye dulls and that Stolpersteine are inert, paralyzed by our inattention, dim and faded amidst the shapely fallen leaves.
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