Revolution Monument

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Memorial to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg , Berlin-Friedrichsfelde 1926, design: Mies van der Rohe

The Monument to the Revolution was a way of thinking and Memorial , the 1926 on the Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde was built in Berlin, in memory of the 1,919 murdered KPD -Leader Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg and the victims of the Reichstag riots of 1920 and some more later died revolutionaries from the labor movement . The building was stripped down to its foundations by the National Socialists in 1935 and was not restored after the end of the Second World War . There has been a memorial here since 1982.

Idea and competitions

June 13, 1919: funeral procession for the funeral of Rosa Luxemburg

The plan to erect an appropriate memorial and memorial was pursued by a dedicated memorial committee that was formed on the initiative of Wilhelm Pieck . The foundation stone was laid on June 15, 1924 .

However, there were still no clear ideas about the appearance and, above all, the financing of a monument. All supporters of the communists were called upon to make proposals in connection with the holding of a party congress in 1925. As a basic idea, a design by Auguste Rodin could be presented, which was called The Outrage and depicted a bronze statue ( Genie de la Guerre ) in front of a wall. The wall served as a symbol both for the suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871 and for the solidarity with the Soviet Union and the revolutionaries buried at the Kremlin wall in Moscow . The monument was never realized in this form.

After the deaths of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, there were competitions for monuments in the Soviet Union that proposed a speaker's podium.

Procurement

Instead, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed a "Monument to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg" or the "Revolution Monument" with the essential element of a wall made of protruding and recessed hard-fire bricks, namely the one for expressionist architecture, on behalf of the art patron and KPD functionary Eduard Fuchs typical Oldenburg clinker bricks.

Mies van der Rohe, whose father was a stone setter, later explained (also to the McCarthy Committee ) that Fuchs had asked him for the contract after Mies had described an existing monument design as a "banker's monument" unsuitable for revolutionaries. Bad on this: “One of the first houses I built was for Hugo Perls in Berlin. Mr. Perls sold his house in the early twenties to a Mr. Edward Fuchs. [...] After discussing his house problems Mr. Fuchs then said he wanted to show us something. […] It was a huge stone monument with Doric colums and medallions of Luxemburg and Liebknecht. When I saw it I started to laugh and I told him it would be a fine monument for a banker. "

The sculptor Herbert Garbe was involved in the design and later the construction .

Construction and execution

Inauguration of the monument by Wilhelm Pieck in June 1926

Sergius Ruegenberg , then Mies employee, reported:

“The idea was to build a monument out of large blocks. Since concrete didn't seem "EDEL" enough for Mies, he chose Oldenburg clinker. (It was supposed to be basalt blocks first - but too expensive.) So a model was made in clay by the collaborating sculptor (I forgot the name [Herbert Garbe]) - with a lot of shifting and improvements after a charcoal sketch by Mies and with him ! I made the drawings based on the model, the back was a mirror set of the front. E. Walter made drawings of the concrete shape without the clinker cladding, that is, minus approx. 13 cm on all sides or 25 cm (clinker size) for girders. A concrete shell was created. Round bars were carefully drawn in at all corners and ends of the cladding, especially for the lower surfaces of the so-called blocks. The clinker clinker held onto this in the joints (approx. Every 2–3 stones) so as not to fall off. "

- Sergius Ruegenberg in a letter dated January 1, 1992

The memorial was erected by workers from Bauhütte Berlin in the spring of 1926 and unveiled on June 13, 1926 - still unfinished because the money raised was not enough. In the following weeks, the clinker sculpture was completed at the site of the laying of the foundation stone and inaugurated on July 11, 1926. The communists Ernst Meyer , Paul Schwenk and Paul Scholze as well as the member of the Socialist League Georg Ledebour gave speeches to the participants of the inauguration ceremony. Since no supplier could be found for the KPD star made of stainless steel , five rhombs were ordered and assembled, but the planned inscription “The Dead Heroes of the Revolution” and “I was, I am, I will be” never carried out. The flagpole, which was missing from the building application drawing, had to be removed again in 1928 by order of the authorities.

Until 1933, annual parades and commemorative ceremonies in honor of Liebknecht and Luxemburg (LL weeks) took place in the cemetery near the revolutionary monument. In February 1933, the National Socialists began to destroy the memorial by first tearing off the five-pointed star. It came as a trophy to the Revolutionary Museum of SA Standard 6 in Taubenstrasse 7. At the beginning of 1935, the rulers had the building removed down to its foundations and the graves leveled.

During the war (after 25 years), new graves were dug here in 1944 and 1945, which obviously led to the loss of the bones of the revolutionaries (exception: Franz Mehring ).

After the destruction

Postage stamp (1980) with the Revolution Monument
Memorial plaque (1982) for the demolished revolutionary monument

After the end of the Second World War , the destroyed revolutionary monument was not restored. However, the tradition of memorial marches and rallies was revived, for which purpose a makeshift replica of the monument was erected in 1946.

There have been repeated initiatives to permanently reconstruct the destroyed memorial. A Liebknecht-Luxemburg-Gesellschaft, founded in West Berlin in 1968, tried for some time to have the Van der Rohe memorial rebuilt in the Tiergarten . Numerous supporters such as the social democrats Kurt Neubauer , Walter Sickert and humanities scholars such as Wolfgang Abendroth , Ernst Bloch or Walter Jens did not manage to obtain funding. The architect also refused to give his consent. So this idea did not materialize.

In 1968, under the name Aktion 507 , a group of young Berlin architects, assistants and architecture students met at the Technical University of Berlin . In addition to an exhibition, another public action by the group was a fundraising for the reconstruction of the revolutionary monument at a new location on the Landwehr Canal . However , the reconstruction did not go beyond a symbolic laying of the foundation stone on the day the New National Gallery opened .

In 1980, as part of the Bauhaus series, a GDR stamp was issued with the memorial, but with the imprecise name "Memorial of the Socialists". Obviously, this drew attention to the still existing foundation, so that its northern part was redesigned as described below, but the southern part was removed.

In 1982, a plaque based on designs by Günther Stahn (architect) and Gerhard Thieme (sculptor) with the inscription: “On this foundation stood the revolutionary monument for Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and many other revolutionary fighters of the German labor movement . Erected in 1926 by the Communist Party of Germany based on plans by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. ”This memorial is on the Berlin list of monuments.

Every year since the murder of the two revolutionary leaders Liebknecht and Luxemburg (with the exception of the years 1934–1945), the Socialists' Day of Remembrance has been held on the second Sunday in January. Here wreaths, but above all red carnations, are laid on the graves of the socialists. The leadership of the GDR also used the day for an annual large demonstration . In 1988 civil rights activists showed Rosa Luxemburg's quote “Freedom is always only the freedom of those who think differently” on banners before they were arrested. The Liebknecht Luxembourg demonstrations have been continued since 1990 by an alliance of various left-wing groups, parties and individuals.

Discussion about a reconstruction

After 1989, the SED's decision not to rebuild the original monument was often questioned. Here, the rather anecdotal view in East and West Germany (“Star architect even built a memorial for top communists in the early days”) obscures the view that Mies has solved the design task “revolutionary monument” just as well as the pavilion task in Barcelona. For Arthur Drexler, director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, for example, the memorial was “unmatched as an abstract expression of unrest.” The KPD, too, began to appreciate the memorial as a background for speeches or the “historical handshake”.

In 2004, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone, a symposium took place on questions of the history of the design and destruction of the revolutionary monument. Mies van der Rohe's relationship with the communist labor movement, the archive and files on the memorial and general questions about the culture of remembrance also came on the agenda. In 2013 a symposium took place in Lichtenberg on the question of reconstruction (see web links).

A true-to-scale model of the revolutionary monument has been exhibited since July 2014 in the historical documentation exhibition on fascism and national socialism in the Bolzano victory monument .

From June 6th to August 1st, 2015, the draft of the Croatian artist Sanja Iveković of a modified reconstruction of the “Luxemburg-Liebknecht Monument” was exhibited in the DAAD gallery. On June 13, 2019, a temporary installation with the front view of the monument was presented to the public at the original location.

In June 2019, Wita Noack, the director of the Mies-van-der-Rohe-Haus , spoke out in favor of the reconstruction of the revolutionary monument. Lichtenberg would not only be enriched by a point of attraction, it would also be given a place to deal with its changeful history. “A good time for this would be the 100th anniversary of the unveiling of the monument,” says Noack.

Directions

From the main entrance to the Socialist Memorial, take the western paved main path on the left to its northern end on the right. Since the main historical route is east, the starred side was the east side.

literature

Web links

Commons : Revolution Monument (Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

References and footnotes

  1. ↑ a b c d Joachim Hoffmann: Berlin-Friedrichsfelde. A German national cemetery. Cultural history guide. P. 22ff.
  2. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Drengenberg: Soviet policy in the field of visual arts from 1917 to 1934. Berlin 1972nd
  3. ↑ New Society for Fine Arts : Who Owns the World? Berlin 1977, there: R.-P. Baacke and M. Nungesser: I am, I was, I will be , there: DD Egbert, quoted Mies in the 1960s.
  4. ↑ The Red Flag . June 15, 1926.
  5. ↑ Mies was able to save this sketch and other drawings to the USA .
  6. ↑ Quotation from Rosa Luxemburg 's last article, in which she quotes Ferdinand Freiligrath on the suppression of the 1848 revolution.
  7. ↑ Commemorations also on June 13, at least in 1919, 1924 and 1926.
  8. ^ JK von Engelbrechten , Hans Volz : We wander through the National Socialist Berlin. A guide through the memorials of the struggle for the imperial capital. Central Publishing House of the NSDAP, F. Eher Nachf., Munich 1937, p. 59.
  9. ↑ See in the text of the memorial of the socialists .
  10. ^ Dull star . In: Der Spiegel . Issue 39/1968, p. 193.
  11. ↑ Monument database Berlin
  12. ^ Luxemburg-Liebknecht-Demo: memorial procession on our own behalf. In: Spiegel Online . January 6, 2011.
  13. ↑ Der Spiegel of September 23, 1968, quoted in New Society for Fine Art: Revolution and Photography , Berlin 1989.
  14. ↑ Erich Rinka: Photography in the class struggle. Leipzig 1981.
  15. ↑ 80 years of the revolutionary monument in the Friedrichsfelde cemetery. Symposium on the pros and cons of a reconstruction debate ( Memento from July 3, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  16. ^ Luxemburg-Liebknecht-Monument in Berlin: Splintered Revolutions. In: The daily newspaper. June 2015.
  17. ↑ Sanja Iveković: I was, I am, I will be! on: e-flux.com (English)
  18. ^ The revolutionary monument by Mies van der Rohe. Press release of the Lichtenberg District Office from June 11, 2019.
  19. ^ Tomas Morgenstern: Monument and Architectural Icon (New Germany). Retrieved November 10, 2019 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 ′ 21 ″  N , 13 ° 30 ′ 58 ″  E