Hamburg Memorial

Grieving mother with child

The Hamburg memorial , officially: Memorial to the fallen of both world wars , is a stele with the relief mourning mother with child . The relief was created in 1931 by Ernst Barlach to commemorate those who fell in the First World War . The architect of the memorial, created from 1930 to 1932, was Klaus Hoffmann . It is on the Kleine Alster at the eastern end of the Rathausmarkt .

The deliberately simple memorial with the text "Forty thousand sons of the city gave their lives for you - 1914-1918" was seen by the public at the time as a political declaration of war by the social-liberal senate made up of the SPD , DDP and DVP against the right-wing parties, especially since the equestrian statue of Kaiser was at the same time Wilhelm I had been removed from the Rathausmarkt. The words "for you" in the inscription, suggesting a sacrificial death, were already a concession to right-wing movements that the SPD initially wanted to prevent. The relief was removed as degenerate art by the National Socialists in 1938 and replaced by the motif of a soaring eagle by Hans Martin Ruwoldt . They also erected a war memorial at the Dammtor .

After the Second World War , the portrait was reconstructed by the stonemason Friedrich Bursch and the memorial was rededicated to commemorate both world wars. Since then, the monument has been the city's official memorial to the fallen, on which the senate and citizens' wreaths are laid every year on Memorial Day .