Colonial War Memorial (Düsseldorf)

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Colonial War Memorial (2020)

The Colonial War Memorial Düsseldorf is a war memorial in Düsseldorf . It was donated by the Lower Rhine Fusilier Regiment No. 39 to commemorate members of the regiment who participated in the suppression of the Herero and Nama uprisings in German South West Africa between 1904 and 1907 and who died there. The monument was designed in 1908 by the sculptor and regimental member Peter Bürger and inaugurated on May 26, 1909 on the parade ground of the Tannenstrasse barracks in Düsseldorf- Derendorf . 1935 was from there to the corner Tannenstraße / Roßstraße the franc place - - to a turf field with wood background translocated .

description

The monument consists of an approx. 1.5 meter high, approx. 200 kg heavy bronze sculpture that rests on a neoclassical , approx. 2.2 meter high sandstone plinth. The monument base is architecturally structured on all four sides with pilasters . The pilasters, which frame a plaque on the front of the monument, stand on a base and are surmounted by a cornice at the top. The bronze sculpture shows a soldier in tropical uniform with a protective troop hat removed . With his upper body erect, the rifle on his lap in his right hand, he sits on the floor, looking down, mourning or even struggling with death.

history

When an uprising of the Herero tribe broke out in German South West Africa under Kaptein Samuel Maharero in 1904 , which was soon joined by a Nama tribe , two officers, nine NCOs and 38 ordinary soldiers of the Lower Rhine Fusilier Regiment No. 39 reported for military service in the protection force for German South West Africa . From the ranks of this regiment, participants had already registered for the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 . In the course of the events which, according to the current historical view, culminated in a genocide of the Herero and Nama, Lieutenant Gottfried Erich Bender, son of the former mayor of Gerresheim , Otto Bender , died in Africa - according to the original memorial plaque on the monument base July 5, 1906, NCO Josef Kaplecky on November 2, 1905 and the fusiliers Johann Helmut Fraenzen and Karl Heinz Schimmel on October 4, 1904 and March 26, 1905. The fusilier Trakowiak also died, but the one on the plaque did not was mentioned. The NCOs dedicated a memorial plaque to Kaplecki, which was lost before the outbreak of World War II.

Bronze sculpture of the colonial warrior

In 1908, the commander who had been transferred to the Lower Rhine Fusilier Regiment No. 39 in Düsseldorf, commissioned Colonel Cai Theodor Dame , who, as the successor to Lothar von Trotha , had commanded the protection forces in German South West Africa until June 23, 1906, to erect a war memorial to members of the regiment. Its sandstone plinth was erected on the parade ground of the barracks under the direction of NCO Runkel. After the sculptor Peter Bürger from the regiment had completed the bronze sculpture of the warrior, the monument was inaugurated on May 26, 1909. Members of the Lower Rhine Fusilier Regiment No. 39 collected the funds for the erection of the monument after an appeal for donations made by the lady to the people of Düsseldorf.

After the First World War , the Allies occupied the Rhineland and the Ruhr . In this context, French soldiers were quartered in the Tannenstrasse barracks from 1921. These damaged the monument several times. The soldier's head was shot through and the barrel of the gun was cut off. The bayonet is still missing today. There are also traces of bullet holes on the base.

After the end of the occupation of the Ruhr, forces of the colonial movement - the Kolonialverein Düsseldorf e. V. under Johannes Dammermann, the Düsseldorf department of the German Colonial Society under Richard Lehnkering and the Colonial Society Düsseldorf under Ludwig Pieper - as well as the veterans' association of the Lower Rhine Fusilier Regiment No. 39 and also civic associations - the zoo civic association and the Derendorf civic association - that the City of Düsseldorf restored the monument and placed it in a public place. The city initially rejected this request “because of the low artistic content” of the monument.

It was not until 1935 that a renewed application by the veterans' association of the 39ers was approved by the city, which took over the costs of the Frankenplatz to be redesigned. The renovation costs were raised by members of the colonial associations and the Lower Rhine Fusilier Regiment No. 39 through a fundraising campaign and the sale of song books. On the occasion of the meeting of the Rhenish-Westphalian Colonial Warriors' Union, which took place in Düsseldorf on September 28 and 29, 1935, the newly erected monument on Frankenplatz was declared head of colonial policy on September 29, 1935 in the presence of Franz Ritter von Epp , the Reich Governor of Bavaria Office of the NSDAP and federal leader of the German Colonial Warrior Association , inaugurated as part of a tribute to the dead and presented to Mayor Hans Wagenführ with a new commemorative plaque as the “General Colonial Memorial”. At least one Askari took part in this ceremony, at which a memorial certificate was embedded in the monument base . While the colonial war memorial developed into a place of pilgrimage and memorial during the Nazi era , another Düsseldorf bronze sculpture with African references, Die Nubierin by Bernhard Sopher , was defamed as " degenerate " in 1938 and dismantled.

Monument in the green area on Frankenplatz

In January 1951, thieves tried to lift the monument from its pedestal. As a result, on April 13, 1951, the city's cultural committee decided to remove the bronze sculpture with three other endangered works from its place until further notice. A year later it was re-erected at Frankenplatz with a theft-proof anchorage and a renewed writing tablet. During the student movement in 1967 the memorial was damaged again, this time the memorial plaque on the monument's base was deliberately destroyed.

In 2004, the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland had a metal plaque set up on Frankenplatz next to the memorial to commemorate “the people of Namibia”. It commemorates those "who fell victim to genocide by German troops during the colonial war of 1904–1908 in 'German South West Africa'". During a ceremony on September 12, 2019, this board was renewed - the text was slightly revised. According to the historian Joachim Zeller , the plaque is the first memorial plaque in the whole of the Federal Republic of Germany to describe the war crimes in German South West Africa as genocide . It was not until July 2015 that the German Foreign Office classified the events as genocide.

See also

literature

  • Lothar Putzstück: Africa and Düsseldorf in the German Empire (1871–1945) . In: Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst, Reinhard Klein-Arendt (ed.): Africans in Germany and black Germans - past and present. Contributions to the conference of the same name from July 13-15, 2003 in the NS Documentation Center (EL-DE House) Cologne . (= Encounters. History and Present of African and European Encounter. History and Presence of African-European Encounters . Volume 3, edited by Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst, Reinhard Klein-Arendt, Stefanie Michels), Lit Verlag, Münster 2004, ISBN 978-3-8258-6824-6 , pp. 57-74 ( Google Books ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Düsseldorfer General-Anzeiger , edition of May 27, 1909
  2. ^ Sophia Böhme: Association of former 39ers . In: Tim Mörsch (author and editing), Sophia Böhme, Andrea Braunsberger, André Feddrich, Ute Marek, Tammy Prondzinsky, Julia Voigt, Roswitha Zander (authors): Kolonialismus vor Ort. Colonial movement and associations in Düsseldorf . Brochure, project seminar "Colonialism on site", Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf 2014, p. 10 ( PDF )
  3. ↑ Joachim Zeller : Symbolic Politics. Notes on the colonial German culture of remembrance . In: Jürgen Zimmerer , Joachim Zeller (Ed.): Genocide in German South West Africa. The colonial war (1904–1908) in Namibia and its consequences . Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-898-1 , p. 198 ( Google Books )
  4. ↑ Handover of the 39 colonial war memorial to the city of Düsseldorf . In: The Thirty-Nine . Regimental magazine, November 1935 issue, Düsseldorf City Archives: XXIV 1179
  5. ^ Colonial War Day in Düsseldorf . In: Düsseldorfer Stadt-Nachrichten , morning issue No. 486 of September 28, 1935 ( PDF )
  6. ↑ Colonial War Memorial: The memorial plaque on the genocide will be renewed , website in the presse.ekir.de portal , accessed on January 26, 2020
  7. ↑ German colonial crimes: the German government calls the Herero massacre “genocide” for the first time . Article from July 10, 2015 in the portal spiegel.de , accessed on August 2, 2020

Coordinates: 51 ° 14 ′ 57.9 "  N , 6 ° 46 ′ 33.1"  E