Black Form - Dedicated to the Missing Jews
Black Form - Dedicated to the Missing Jews ("Black Form - Dedicated to the Missing Jews") is a 1987 sculpture by the American artist Sol LeWitt , which has been used since 1989 as a memorial for the destroyed Jewish community in Altona on the Republic Square in front of the Altona town hall is installed.
description
Black Form - Dedicated to the Missing Jews is a work of art of Minimal Art , a black cube made of aerated concrete blocks , five and a half meters long, two meters high and two meters deep. It is built at the southern end of the square, a good 60 meters away axially in a direct line of sight to the white, neoclassical building of the town hall and forms a stark contrast to it. As a memorial, it is dedicated to the Jews who are forever missing in Altona, and thus represents the emptiness that arose with the destruction of the Jewish community by the National Socialists . It is an express reminder not only of those who were murdered in the concentration camps and those who emigrated, "but also of their unborn children and grandchildren, whose absence is painfully noticeable in German society."
background
Sol LeWitt designed the work in 1987 for the exhibition Skulptur.Projekte in Münster , where it stood a few months in front of the Prince-Bishop's Palace . After the University of Münster rejected a permanent takeover, the artist handed the Black Form over to the Hamburg cultural authority and the Altona district, where it was inaugurated at its current location in November 1989. He called it "the most important piece I have ever done" and donated his fee to the Foundation for the History of the German Jews .
According to LeWitt's conception of art, the sculpture does not have any inscriptions. Since it is still felt to be in need of explanation, two boards were put up on the right and left with explanations and a sketch of the history of the Jewish community in Altona in 1992 on the initiative of the Ottensen district archive .
See also
literature
- Julia Mummenhoff, Jens Michelsen: Sol LeWitts Black Form - Dedicated to the Missing Jews . In: Gerhard Kaufmann (Ed.): Shadow. Jewish culture in Altona and Hamburg , exhibition catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the Altona Museum from May 20 to September 27, 1998, Dölling and Galitz Verlag, Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-930802-85-6 .
Web links
- Guide to places of remembrance from 1933 to 1945 (PDF; 1.1 MB), updated second edition 2008, accessed on June 7, 2011.
- Holocaust Memorials in Hamburg (English). In: A History of Jews in Hamburg .
Individual evidence
- ^ "Black Form" stays in front of the Altona town hall ( Memento from December 14, 2004 in the Internet Archive ). In: Münster Universitäts Zeitung 07/2000, December 15, 2000, accessed on June 7, 2011.
- ↑ Julia Mummenhoff, Jens Michelsen: Sol LeWitts Black Form - Dedicated to the Missing Jews . In: Gerhard Kaufmann (Ed.): Shadow. Jewish culture in Altona and Hamburg , p. 138.
Coordinates: 53 ° 32 '52.5 " N , 9 ° 56' 7.4" E