"Passagen" memorial site

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
View through the corridor of the "Passagen" memorial site

The “Passagen” memorial site ( cat . “Passatges”) is a monument to the philosopher Walter Benjamin on the Costa Brava, opened in 1994 in the place where he died, Portbou , designed by the artist Dani Karavan .

background

Walter Benjamin was on the run from the German Gestapo in 1940 . He was carrying a briefcase with manuscripts. With a small group led by escape assistant Lisa Fittko , he crossed the Pyrenees on September 25th to reach the Spanish coastal town of Portbou. From there, Benjamin, who had a visa for the USA, wanted to travel on to Lisbon. Due to a heart disease, he was very slow to walk. Contrary to expectations, the refugees in Portbou were refused entry according to a newly issued regulation by the Spanish government. Benjamin died in his hotel room on the night of September 26th. In view of the announced deportation of the refugee group back to France for the next day, it is suspected that he committed suicide with an overdose of morphine. Benjamin is buried in the Portbou cemetery, where a plaque has been commemorating him since 1979.

layout

Glance into the dark entrance of the corridor

The memorial is located at the Portbou Cemetery, which is just outside the city about twenty meters above sea level on a rocky peninsula that narrows Portbou Bay on its southern flank.

The monument consists of several elements made of rusty steel, distributed in the landscape: a small, four-step staircase leading to the sky and then breaking off, a square platform with a cube in its center and another staircase that leads in an east-northeast direction from Cemetery forecourt leads down through an underground entrance into the rock. From there you can reach the bay in a steel corridor that is open at the top and protrudes over the sea. From the stairs you can see the north-eastern flank of the bay on the opposite bank. The corridor is closed at the lower end with a glass plate in which the quotation in German

“It is more difficult to honor the memory of the nameless than that of the famous.
The historical construction is dedicated to the memory of the nameless.

Walter Benjamin, GS I, 1241 "

is engraved. It comes from Benjamin's notes on his last essay on the concept of history in 1939 .

Circumstances of origin

Entrance into the corridor, in the background the cemetery wall

At the suggestion of Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker , the Foreign Office and the Federal Ministry of the Interior commissioned the Working Group of Independent Cultural Institutes eV (AsKI) with the planning, organization and realization of a memorial site for the German-Jewish philosopher in 1989 . On his 100th birthday in 1992, it was supposed to be opened in Portbou, where Benjamin died while fleeing from the National Socialists in 1940. For the artistic implementation, Dr. Konrad Scheurmann, the managing director of the AsKI, win the Israeli artist Dani Karavan . On September 26, 1990, on the 50th anniversary of Walter Benjamin's death, the foundation stone was laid for the memorial site in the presence of numerous representatives from Germany, France, Spain and Israel. After the Federal Audit Office in 1992 - obviously misinformed - criticized the fact that "a grave maintenance project had turned into a million dollar project", the tabloid newspapers Bild and Neue Revue scandalized the cost of realizing Karavan's design, estimated at 980,000 DM. The Federal Foreign Office stopped funding, a procedure that met with widespread lack of understanding among the international cultural community. In September, Federal President von Weizsäcker visited the exhibition “Border Crossing. Walter Benjamin - Leben und Werk “, which continued to advertise the project in the town hall of Portbou and then wandered through Germany and was also shown in Amsterdam. The book "Für Walter Benjamin" was published by Suhrkamp-Verlag and published by Inter Nationes in a French, English. and Spanish edition. On the occasion of the exhibition, new documents on the death of Walter Benjamin were discovered in the community archive in Portbou, which the AsKI was able to publish in autumn. All these efforts to realize the memorial site were ultimately crowned with success: On the initiative of the Prime Ministers Hans Eichel (Hesse) and Erwin Teufel (Baden-Württemberg), 12 German federal states , the regional government of Catalonia and private donors took over the financing of the project. Construction began in Portbou on September 26, 1993, and on May 15, 1994, with large international participation (including Lisa Fittko , Walter Benjamin's escape assistant), "Passagen" - memorial for Walter Benjamin and the exiles of 1933 -1945 "- the official name - opened in Portbou. The memorial site was subsequently donated to the Portbou community.

literature

Web links

Coordinates: 42 ° 25 ′ 37 ″  N , 3 ° 9 ′ 48 ″  E