Schill Monument (Braunschweig)

Schill monument in Braunschweig

The iron cross on the monument

Nameplate

The Schilldenkmal is located in the street of the same name from Braunschweig . On the top of the monument, inaugurated on March 19, 1837, for the 1809 uprising against the rule of Napoléon Bonaparte, there is an iron cross with the inscription “They fought and fell for Germany's freedom”.

The Schilldenkmal is the grave of fourteen comrades-in-arms of the Prussian major Ferdinand von Schill who were executed in Braunschweig , whose head is also buried in an urn at the foot of the monument. It was re-consecrated in 1955 and has since been a reminder of the fallen German soldiers of World War II .

Ferdinand von Schill

Ferdinand von Schill and his officers started an uprising against the Napoleonic occupation with voluntary associations in 1809. His troops, consisting of 1500 to 2000 soldiers, were defeated on May 31, 1809 in Stralsund by the 6000-strong troops of the Dutch general Gratien and the Danish general Johann von Ewald . Schill fell in the fighting, his head was preserved in alcohol by the victors as a trophy and sent to the King of Westphalia , Napoleon's brother Jérôme Bonaparte . 14 of his soldiers were executed as "deserters" by a French military tribunal in Braunschweig.

The creation of the monument

The Schilldenkmal in the 19th century

The so-called "Invalidenhäuschen" at the Schill monument.

26 years after the death of Ferdinand von Schill, Braunschweig aristocrats joined an initiative by Baron Friedrich Karl von Vechelde to erect a memorial for Ferdinand von Schill. The initiative was supported by the Ducal Braunschweig officer corps. The memorial was to serve as a burial place for the recovered remains of the soldiers executed in Braunschweig and later also for Schill's head preserved in alcohol.

On March 19, 1837, the monument, which was built according to plans by Carl Theodor Ottmer pupil Heinrich Friedrich Uhlmann , was inaugurated. It is on the spot where the Schill officers were shot. On September 24, 1837, Schill's head was also buried there in an urn. In 1840 the so-called Invalidenhäuschen was built on the site, a veteran of Schill's campaign was quartered there, who was supposed to look after the monument and report to visitors about Schill's deeds. The first guardian of the disabled house was Gottfried Möring from Calvörde.

Commemoration at the Schill monument

Commemorative events took place at the memorial in the following years. The events of Schill's liberation struggle were interpreted from the perspective of the respective zeitgeist and instrumentalized for current political purposes. For the centenary, a direct line was drawn from Schill to the Franco-German War in 1870/71, and Schill was portrayed as the pioneer of the Bismarck Empire. In 1933, the National Socialists remembered the so-called Ruhrkampf against the French occupation of the Ruhr area 1923-25 and described it as a continuation of Schill's freedom struggle, which would now be continued by the SS and SA.

Subcamp Schillstrasse / Schilldenkmal

During the Second World War, a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp , the Schillstrasse concentration camp satellite camp , was located on the adjacent site of the Schilldenkmal .

Re-consecration 1955

On September 4, 1955, the Schill memorial was rededicated by the city on the initiative of the Braunschweig regimental comradeships. The new plaques now also commemorate the soldiers of the Brunswick troops who died in World War II . In a brochure from the city of Braunschweig on the new consecration it says: “In Braunschweig, at a place consecrated by the death of German warriors, stands the Schill memorial ... For this reason, the plan was welcomed by participants in the Second World War ... to honor the fallen of the years 1939–1945 in this memorial. "

Under the old inscription “They fought and fell for Germany's freedom” there are now more panels with the inscription: “Newly consecrated to the memory of thousands of soldiers - sons of all German tribes - who belonged to the troops listed here who fought on the fronts of the war from 1939 to 1945 , fallen, missing or did not return from captivity. "

The new consecration was initiated with a ringing of all Brunswick bells. Then there was a joint Protestant and Catholic service at the monument. The then Lord Mayor Otto Bennemann gave a speech, followed by a wreath-laying ceremony accompanied by the “song of the good comrade” .

Memorial events on Memorial Day

Since the re-consecration in 1955, the official commemorative event of the “Volksbund deutscher Kriegsgräberfürsorge” and the city of Braunschweig took place every year on the day of national mourning. Representatives of the major parties, the council groups, the mayor, the German armed forces and traditional associations of former troops take part.

Controversy over the forms of remembrance

In 1994, at the Schilldenkmal there were clashes between the participants in the official memorial event and participants in a memorial event held at the same place and at the same time by left-wing groups for the “victims of fascism and militarism”.

These disputes ultimately led to the city building the Schillstrasse subcamp memorial on the site of the Schill memorial and relocating the official memorial event to the main cemetery.

Schillstrasse Concentration Camp Subcamp Memorial

Since May 2000, the “Memorial to the Braunschweig Schillstrasse subcamp”, designed by the artist Sigrid Sigurdsson and built by the city, has been a reminder of the subcamp. The Invalidenhäuschen is now an "open archive", to the creation of which various Braunschweig citizens, organizations and parties contributed with documents, experience reports, memories and research on the history of the camp, but also on the disputes about the forms of memory since 1945. Texts from the open archive are posted on boards on the site. On the former site of the warehouse, which is now used by Post AG, a neon sign with the warning: "The future has a long past" was placed.

literature

Sam A. Mustafa: The Politics of Memory: Rededicating Two Historical Monuments in Postwar Germany , in: Central European History , Vol. 41, (2008), pp. 255-280, ISSN 0008-9389 .
Bernhild Vögel: Schillstrasse memorial. Materials for school and educational work , Braunschweig 1998, ISBN 3-9801592-3-X .
Antifascist Plenum (Ed.): The Braunschweiger Schilldenkmal - From the external command of the Neuengamme concentration camp to the site of the mockery of the victims of German fascism , Braunschweig 1995 - This brochure is about so-called " gray literature ", it is subjectively shaped and not a scientific work ; But since there is no other literature on the Schill Memorial and its creation, it was listed here anyway.

Individual evidence

↑ Veit Veltzke (ed.): For the freedom - against Napoleon / Ferdinand von Schill, Prussia and the German nation . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne-Weimar-Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-412-20340-5 , p. 376.

Web links

Commons : Schill Memorial - Collection of images, videos and audio files

http://www.schillstrasse.de/ - Homepage of the memorial site KZ-Außenlager Schillstrasse: Information on the creation of the memorial, the new consecration, the concentration camp subcamp and the creation of the memorial

52.256388888889 10.541666666667Coordinates: 52 ° 15 ′ 23 ″ N , 10 ° 32 ′ 30 ″ E

[1] Veit Veltzke (ed.): For the freedom - against Napoleon / Ferdinand von Schill, Prussia and the German nation . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne-Weimar-Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-412-20340-5 , p. 376.