Memorials of the Bundeswehr

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Wreaths in the Bundeswehr Memorial

The Bundeswehr memorials are intended to commemorate the members of the Bundeswehr who died in the course of their service . As a rule, they are not war memorials in the true sense of the word, as they are mostly intended to anonymously remember all those killed in a branch of the armed forces , a deployment site or a unit.

Memorial of the Bundeswehr

The Bundeswehr Memorial with the Federal Ministry of Defense in the background

history

On June 13, 2007, Federal Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung presented the plans for the Bundeswehr Memorial in Berlin . During the presentation of the draft, he said that he “had the idea when he first visited Afghanistan with a view to the memorial there”. A selection committee decided in favor of the design by the architect Andreas Meck . It enables public access for visitors, but also meets the need for individual grief. "The draft spoke to me personally and touched me," emphasized the General Inspector of the Bundeswehr , General Wolfgang Schneiderhan . It also said: “In Germany, the army , air force and navy commemorate their dead soldiers on the memorials of the respective armed forces in Koblenz , Fürstenfeldbruck and Laboe . What is still missing today, however, is a central place where all dead of the Bundeswehr can be commemorated in dignified form. ”Against this background, Jung decided to erect a memorial at the Berlin office of the Federal Ministry of Defense on the grounds of the Bendler Block . On November 27, 2008, the foundation stone for the memorial was finally laid there on the eastern edge of Hildebrandstrasse. On September 8, 2009 the memorial was inaugurated by the then Federal President Horst Köhler .

On May 8, 2014, the memorial was expanded to include the Book of Remembrance , and the Information Room was opened on June 11, 2018 .

layout

Book of remembrance

It is a reinforced concrete cuboid 32 meters long, eight meters wide and ten meters high. It is draped with an openwork bronze cover , the structure of which is reminiscent of the soldiers' identification tags , which are halved in the event of death . In the room of silence ( cella ), the names of over 3,100 soldiers who died in the service are projected on the wall for about five seconds. It thus resembles a video installation and differs from traditional war memorials and plaques, where the names are permanently recorded on stone, metal or wood. This is to avoid hero worship and instead emphasize the transience of life and the individuality of death.

The book of remembrance , inaugurated in 2014, consists of 20 bronze plates on which the names of all those who died in the Bundeswehr are recorded. The names of the deceased are sorted according to the year of their death and can therefore be opened specifically.

The information room, which was opened in 2018, presents individual deaths and circumstances of death in the context of the history of the Bundeswehr and its tasks. Although it maintains a spatial distance from the memorial, the room was designed as an urban and architectural addition to the Bundeswehr memorial.

criticism

Critics describe the monument as conceptually half-baked. The names of those killed are displayed too briefly and cannot be recognized in unfavorable sunlight. This means that the building does not fulfill its purpose as a place of private mourning. In the absence of biographical information, the names of the dead would be taken out of context and marginalized. In addition, the list of names was not worked out carefully enough; many a possible name is missing. Others criticize that the memorial has "hardly anything to do with the personal mourning of the bereaved", but "dead Bundeswehr soldiers are honored here by the state because they served state goals." The criticism was addressed with the Book of Remembrance and the Information Room .

The FDP campaigned in vain for a location in the immediate vicinity of the Reichstag in order to take into account the importance of the Bundeswehr as a parliamentary army .

Memorials of the armed forces

The three branches of the armed forces have their own memorials:

While the Navy Memorial was built between 1926 and 1936, the Air Force Memorial was built in 1962 and the Army Memorial in 1972.

  • The naval memorial

  • The memorial of the German Army

  • The Air Force Memorial

Forest of memory

In the Henning-von-Tresckow barracks in Geltow , the forest of remembrance was inaugurated on November 15, 2014 in the forest area of ​​the property as a re-establishment of various provisional honorary groves from countries of assignment, especially Afghanistan, and a place of private memory for the bereaved. The forest of remembrance thus offers an alternative to formal memorials and state remembrance. On the one hand, there should be an opportunity for the relatives to plant trees at their own request, or on the other hand to mark existing trees in a suitable way.

For the construction of the memorial, core elements of honor groves were transferred from the countries of deployment to Geltow and the entire facilities were reconstructed as original as possible, otherwise reduced in size but true to scale, in order to achieve the highest possible recognition value. Before being transported to Germany, the honor groves were recorded in detail, dismantled piece by piece and stone by stone, numbered and documented. The bricks for the brick walls typical of the country were re-fired by the original manufacturer in Afghanistan. The heavy boulders or obelisks were packed in transport boxes and transported. Before the reconstruction, the essential elements were professionally reconditioned with appropriate weather protection.

The plant currently consists of the honor groves OP-North , Feyzabad , Kabul , Kunduz and Sarajevo . The honor groves from Prizren and Mazar-e Scharif will also follow after the withdrawal of the Bundeswehr from there.

criticism

The former defense commissioner of the Bundestag , Reinhold Robbe ( SPD ), described the location of the memorial as "shameful". At the remote Schwielowsee the forest of remembrance stands for a "failed memorial culture in Germany". Instead of creating an exposed space in the center of Berlin, the fallen soldiers of the Bundeswehr would be "hidden". This is a "slap in the face for the relatives," said Robbe.

  • Place of silence in the forest of memory

  • Reconstructed Sarajevo memorial stone in the forest of remembrance

  • Reconstructed Kunduz Grove of Honor in the Forest of Remembrance

  • Reconstructed honor grove Kabul in the forest of memory

  • Reconstructed Feyzabad Grove of Honor in the Forest of Memory

  • Plaque on a tree in the forest of remembrance

Monuments in the countries of assignment

Bosnia

In the German field camp Rajlovac in Bosnia-Herzegovina , a memorial with a plaque with the names of those who died there stood on the roll call square called “Europaplatz”. The dead were commemorated here on special occasions and on the day of national mourning. After the camp was cleared, it was moved to the garden of the German embassy in Sarajevo .

Kosovo

In the German field camp Prizren in the south of Kosovo there was a memorial stone on the road between the two larger staff buildings. In addition to members of the armed forces, the board also lists comrades from other troop contributing nations who perished during their service in Kosovo. So far (as of January 2019) no Bundeswehr member has been killed in an attack in Kosovo. The most common cause of death are accidents. The dead were commemorated here on special occasions and on the day of national mourning.

Afghanistan

Grove of honor in the German military camp Kunduz Afghanistan 2009

In Kabul there were two memorial stones in the camp Camp Warehouse in front of the headquarters building, which was dismantled in 2013, and one at the Kabul airport , a gift from the city of Berlin to the German soldiers. This was unveiled on September 3, 2003 in a festive ceremony at Kabul International Airport. The unveiling took place in the presence of ISAF soldiers under their commander, Colonel Uwe Ahrens, and the German ambassador in Kabul, Rainer Eberle. The Berlin Bear (reddish sandstone from a Bavarian quarry) was donated by the Berlin stonemasons and sculptors guild at the request of the Berlin Senate Chancellery . The sculpting work was carried out by trainees. Another memorial stone was in the Feyzab field camp in Badakhshan Province , which also had a German PRT .

The grove of honor was dismantled in October 2013 shortly before the camp was handed over to the Afghan army, transferred to Germany and reconstructed in a reduced form in the Forest of Remembrance, together with other groves of honor that were created during the Bundeswehr's missions abroad. It now has an area of ​​approx. 10 × 10 meters and is accessible to everyone.

Mali

In Camp Castor in Gao , a memorial plaque was inaugurated on November 12, 2017 for the pilots who died in the crash of a Tiger attack helicopter on July 26, 2017, Staff Captain Thomas Müller and Major Jan Färber. It stands side by side with a memorial to the Dutch comrades: the pilots Captain Réne Zeetsen and Lieutenant Ernst Mollinger crashed in an Apache helicopter in Mali in March 2015 .

The memorial plaque has the outline of the country of Mali , the cities of Bamako , Timbuktu , Gao, Kidal and Taoudenni are marked with round holes, the crash site is marked with a four-pointed star. The course of the Niger River is shown with a weld seam. Part of the tail rotor blade of the crashed machine protrudes from the center of the panel. The exact coordinates of the crash site, the call sign of the machine "GISMO 01" and the motto "Brothers in Arms" are milled in there. Below that, on two five-pointed stars, the abbreviations "MLR" for Staff Captain Müller and "FAR" for Major Färber are added.

After the end of the tigers' mission in Gao, the memorial plaque will find a permanent place in the home of the 36th combat helicopter regiment in Fritzlar .

literature

  • Ulrike Gramann: Commemoration for the future - the war memorial of the Bundeswehr in the Berlin Bendlerblock . In: Jan Korte u. Gerd Wiegel (ed.): Visible signs. The new German historical policy - from the perpetrator story to the victim's memory . Cologne 2009 ISBN 978-3-89438-420-3
  • Loretana de Libero, death on duty. German soldiers in Afghanistan. Military History Research Office / Center for Military History and Social Sciences, ZMSBw, Potsdam 2014, ISBN 978-3-941571-29-7
  • Manfred Hettling, Jörg Echternkamp (ed.): Ready to remember to a limited extent. Remembrance of soldiers in the Federal Republic of Germany , Göttingen 2008 ISBN 3525367562
  • Manfred Hettling, Jörg Echternkamp (ed.): Commemoration of the fallen in a global comparison. National tradition, political legitimation and individualization of memory , Munich 2013 ISBN 978-3-486-71627-6
  • Loretana de Libero: Task Force and Remembrance: Commemorative Cultures in the Bundeswehr . In: Bernhard Chiari and Magnus Pahl (eds.): Guide to the history of foreign deployments of the Bundeswehr , Paderborn 2010, pp. 278–287.

Web links

Commons : Memorials of the Bundeswehr  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Memorial of the Bundeswehr
Forest of memory
More monuments in Germany
Monuments abroad

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b http://www.bmvg.de/portal/a/bmvg/ministerium?yw_contentURL=/C1256F1200608B1B/W2744F5T556INFODE/content.jsp . April 30, 2006.
  2. ↑ Foundation stone laid for the Bundeswehr Memorial in Berlin
  3. ↑ It is "a avoidance monument" - Bundeswehr memorial in Berlin inaugurated . In: Deutschlandradio , Sept. 8, 2009
  4. ↑ A new memorial for the fallen soldiers. In: Berliner Morgenpost
  5. ↑ a b BMVg planning staff: The project. In: bundeswehr.de. December 17, 2017. Retrieved August 23, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Worthy remembrance. (No longer available online.) In: bundeswehr-sozialwerk.de. Bundeswehr-Sozialwerk , August 2, 2018, archived from the original on August 24, 2018 ; accessed on August 23, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bundeswehr-sozialwerk.de
  7. ↑ Information room at the Bundeswehr Memorial. In: baunetz-architekten.de. Baunetz , accessed on August 23, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Jochen Rack: The impossibility to mourn. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 15, 2009, p. 13
  9. ↑ For peace, justice and freedom . In: Deutschlandfunk , January 11, 2011
  10. ↑ Ulrike Gramann, Remembrance for the Future. The war memorial of the Bundeswehr in Berlin's Bendlerblock. In: Jan Korte u. Gerd Wiegel (ed.): Visible signs. The new German historical policy - from the perpetrator story to the victim's memory. Cologne 2009, p. 83f.
  11. ↑ http://www.bundestag.de/aktuell/hib/2007/2007_164/03.html  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.bundestag.de  
  12. ↑ The ISAF mission and the “Forest of Remembrance”. Federal Ministry of Defense , November 6, 2014, accessed on November 7, 2014 .
  13. ^ Ex-military commissioner criticizes memorial for soldiers . ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed on November 24, 2018]).
  14. ↑ Marcel Bohnert: Enemies in your own ranks. On the problem of internal perpetrators in Afghanistan, if. Journal for Inner Leadership, 2, 2014, p. 5ff.
  15. ↑ Mali: Memorial for the pilots who crashed. Retrieved April 10, 2020 .