Black garden
Coordinates: 52 ° 26 '2 " N , 7 ° 3' 48" E
The Black Garden is the central memorial for those who died in the war and for those who were racially and politically persecuted in the city of Nordhorn at the site that was previously called the memorial on Langemarckplatz . The Black Garden , designed by the American concept artist Jenny Holzer from 1992 to 1995 , combines elements of the original traditional memorial for the fallen in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 and the First and Second World Wars with its own artistic concept.
The official handover of the facility took place on May 8, 1995. Since 2000, the Black Garden has also been a station on the German-Dutch art and culture route kunstwegen and is also listed as an art object.
The total area of 3447 square meters, consisting of the memorial, various name and memorial plaques, flower beds, sidewalks and benches made of Bentheim sandstone , is a listed building .
Both the original war memorial from 1929 and the redesign were fiercely controversial for years for various reasons.
Location and overview
The facility is located in the center of Nordhorn in the Völlinkhoff area between Vechtestrasse and Van-Delden-Strasse - at the point where the city of Nordhorn had a memorial erected in 1929 for those who fell in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 and the First World War , which was called the memorial on Langemarckplatz during the Nazi era and was later expanded to accommodate those who fell in the Second World War . It is now also dedicated to the Jewish fellow citizens and those people who were persecuted or abducted and perished during the time of National Socialism because of their political convictions.
In the Black Garden three paths are laid out as concentric circles, which are crossed by two straight paths. In the center of the complex is the base of the former memorial. The artist wanted to create an "anti-memorial" and use the investment form to express that the visitor moves through circles as the memory revolves around the unforgettable.
In the beds created by the route there are only dark ("black") plants, with the black snake beard ( Ophiopogon planiscapus ) from Hawaii dominating together with the Ajuga and the Heuchera . These are complemented by seasonal plants such as crocus , purple-black tulips Queen of the Night , the daylily Devil Delight or the carnation King of the Blacks , imperial crowns , irises and pansies . Smaller and larger trees, such as the Judas tree or the blood plum , were planted as accents, and two mourning blood beeches flank the entrance to the complex at the First World War memorial. The center of the Black Garden is formed by the black- fruited apple tree , which is supposed to represent a symbol of fertility and life, but also the fall of man and mortality. ("The tree of knowledge bears grief.")
The color black is considered the color of mourning in the European culture and is primarily associated with night, death, mourning and melancholy. The plants are supposed to express gloomy things or symbolize death and unhappiness with negative associations. The planting concept originally planned by the artist, based on US American climatic conditions, consisting of predominantly exotic plants, had to be adapted over time to the European weather conditions, so that the planting plan was continuously checked with the artist and finally the proportion of native ground cover and perennials increased accordingly .
Distributed between the beds are five benches made of brick-red Bentheim sandstone with text written in by the artist in German and English, reminding of the cruelty of the war. In front of the table for the “politically and racially persecuted” is a small white garden , a bed of white-flowering plants - whereby the symbolic meaning of the white color as that of purity and innocence is set in contrast to black.
The beds are bordered with red Weser sandstone , the path is sprinkled with red brick chippings.
Not all the names of the citizens of the current urban area of Nordhorn are mentioned on the memorial plaques. This is due to the fact that some villages were not incorporated into Nordhorn until 1929 or 1974 and had built their own memorials by then. The information includes name, place of birth, date of death and place of death.
history
After the First World War
The memorial site has its origins in 1929, when the city administration, with financial support from the citizens of Nordhorn, had a memorial built for those who fell in the wars of 1870/71 and 1914-1918 .
Years before, there had been repeated attempts to erect a war memorial for “Groß-Nordhorn”, also because some of the villages and peasants that were now incorporated or in the immediate vicinity had or intended to erect their own memorials, but not the city itself. In 1924, the “municipal colleges” made the decision to “honor the fallen in connection with the establishment of a non-profit institution”, but in 1927 the chairman of the Nordhorn Warrior and Landwehr Association warned the city of the inauguration of the war memorial in Bakelde, which was not yet incorporated Nordhorn, "... to finally provide a worthy place for the 295 fallen ... on which the memorial ... can (can) be erected ..."
Who and when finally made the decision to carry out the building project and commissioned the Hanoverian sculptor Hermann Scheuertstuhl to carry it out is not clear. The Nordhorn city archive only contains a number of letters in which sculptors, stone works and craft firms applied for the contract. In June 1929 the magistrate asked the population for donations for the emerging memorial, the cost of which he estimated at 25,000 German marks and announced: “After long efforts, the city administration will finally come this year for our sons of the city who died in the World War to design a hero's memory honor. The intention is to design the forecourt by a garden architect and sculptor with a reputation for honoring heroes ... the names of the fallen or missing heroes should be on mosaic tiles on the urban property opposite the student dormitory of the advanced school in connection with the later construction of the indoor swimming pool placed in a circular area entwined with conifers. In the middle of this floor covering, a life motif should be created by the sculptor. "
With this "motif of life" the figure of the "rising young man" designed by Scheuertstuhl was addressed, which in the following years caused fierce controversy for years.
The memorial was officially inaugurated on Death Sunday, November 24, 1929.
The facility for the fallen from the First World War, which has been preserved to this day, consists of a ground-level curve with a diameter of 6.30 meters. In flat, ring-shaped memorial plaques, the names of 207 fallen soldiers with military rank, names, date of birth and date of death are carved in stone from Franconian clam calf. A stone slab was provided for each fallen man. The letters were underlaid with dark color. In the middle of the plates stood a round base with a diameter of 1.50 meters and a height of one meter. At the bottom of the base you can read:
"The city of Nordhorn is united by love and thanks to its heroic sons who fell gloriously in the World War 1914–1918."
On the plinth in the middle of the facility stood the 2.10 meter high bronze statue of the young man standing up. On the upper part of the base, the inscription can be read in superimposed capital letters:
"THE FALLEN ARE THAT LIFE STANDS ON."
The foundation work for the monument was carried out by the Nordhorn company Portheine und Sohn; the stone carving work was entrusted to the Munich marble industry Kiefer AG and the garden architect Wilhelm Hübotter from Hanover was responsible for the design of the horticultural system . The execution of the entire work was the responsibility of the Nordhorn city building councilor Krieger.
The inauguration ceremony, including the speeches by Mayor Wilhelm Henn and three clergymen (one each Catholic, Protestant and Jewish) and the listing of the participating groups and associations by name, was documented in a multi-page article in the Nordhorner Nachrichten, where, among other things, the Reich Association of War Disabled and War participants was mentioned as participants are. A few days after the ceremony, another long article appeared in the Nordhorner Nachrichten, in which the very Reichsbund (today's Sozialverband Deutschland ) made itself the spokesman for the Nordhorn population and criticized the memorial in the sharpest possible way. One could “in no way agree with the execution”, because the feelings of the population would be “badly injured” by this “figure of the naked youth”, whose head shows “negroid features”. This actually seemed to correspond to the mood among the population, as the media repeatedly made the monument a negative topic for years and reported that the figure was disparagingly called " Klötenheini " by the citizens .
According to Werner Rohr, the figure was then " taken from the base by SA members and buried in the garden of the former mayor Henn". Another source wrote: "A memorial was created (1929) ... with a naked male figure, the bloodless left hand raised in an oath, but did not meet with the applause of the residents, so that it had to be removed again and only the base with the The names of the war victims remained. "
In fact, the figure was not removed until the spring of 1933, shortly after the National Socialist seizure of power, more than three years after the inauguration. When the monument was erected, National Socialism was still in its development phase and the NSDAP in Nordhorn was still insignificant. The events can therefore not be shortened and simplified in such a way that "the Nazis" rejected the figure and therefore removed it, especially since Scheuertstuhl was an artist valued and promoted by the National Socialists. On the contrary , the Nazi hierarchy up to the Reich Chamber of Culture worked with the artist to resolve the conflict and restore the monument after the figure had been removed. Friction chair was finally even ready to create "a new, Aryan head" for the figure, "which excludes the impression of negro traits from the outset". But the magistrate, who informed us in a letter dated December 12, 1933, that “we would be decidedly more comfortable if Herr Scheuertstuhl could provide us with a replacement for the figure (dying warrior, bugler who blows to collect or a figure that is the whole Warrior honor as well as the local conditions adapt) ”rejected all further proposals.
Three years later, the Nordhorner Tageblatt demanded: "Another question is important: the redesign of our memorial [...] After the restoration of our full sovereignty and equality as well as the freedom of our fatherland [...] it is the duty of honor of the living generation, that her grave, as an eternal memorial of remembrance and obligation, has a massive appearance that corresponds to our feelings. "
At its council meeting on February 8, 1938, the city named the area that had previously not been named Langemarckplatz . According to Lebrecht Forke, the simultaneous renaming of other streets and squares, for example Herbert-Norkus- Strasse, Schlageter- Strasse or Hans-Schemm- Strasse, proves that this was a deliberate dissemination of National Socialist ideas . As a result, the war memorial was rededicated as a Nazi shrine in Rosenberg's sense, where, among other things, National Socialist "hero commemoration ceremonies" were held in March and on Death Sunday in November.
Since a solution to the conflict with the artist Scheuertstuhl could still not be found, the city of Nordhorn was obliged to "announce a new competition and to erect a completely new warrior memorial on the previous memorial site". However, because of the outbreak of World War II, this competition was not held; the monument remained in its incomplete state.
In 1940 the figure, which in 1933 "was first buried in the garden of Mayor Henn and shortly afterwards brought to the fire equipment house [...] after its head and genitals had been chopped off, was handed over to the metal collection point."
After the Second World War
After the Second World War, the city only dealt with the memorial again when the Association of War Disabled (VdK) approached the city in October 1950 and suggested the "erection of a simple wooden cross of the appropriate size on the monument base". The city arranged for a flower bowl to be set up on the pedestal and advised the association that it was desirable "to erect a common memorial to those who died in all wars".
On August 20, 1956, the City Council of Nordhorn decided to redesign the war memorial on Langemarckplatz and commissioned Alfred Dietrich to carry out the project. Dietrich hired the garden and landscape architect Wilhelm Hübotter , who had already advised the city on the horticultural system in 1929 and was now busy planning the Nordhorn Südfriedhof, as a consultant. In August 1958, the city council approved the lowering of the entire wedge-shaped area and the construction of a brick wall that would frame the monument area on the narrowest side of the property triangle and function as a memorial wall.
On the day of national mourning in 1959, 19 bronze plaques, each 1.25 by 0.70 meters, with the names of the war dead and missing persons in World War II were put up. Another plaque contained the names of the politically and racially persecuted Nordhorn citizens from 1933 to 1945. The plaque with the names of the three fallen soldiers from the war of 1870/71 was attached to the former war memorial in front of the Altendorf town hall until 1953. The headline reads:
"Heroes died for king and fatherland in the war against France in 1870/71."
A year later, the system was expanded by a further four panels, as around 200 late registrations had been made. The now 23 bronze plaques, which record names, dates of birth and death or the date of missing in raised letters, list 1,136 dead, wounded or as a result of war, and 681 missing. Furthermore 44 citizens of Nordhorn are listed who did not survive the time of National Socialism because of their faith or political convictions.
One of the boards reads:
"The city of Nordhorn erected this memorial to commemorate the fallen and missing of two world wars, the living as a warning"
and the years 1914–1918 and 1939–1945 are noted under the city arms.
The Bömper model factory from Herborn / Dillkreis produced the panels in 1959 and at the same time supplied the cast bronze flame bowl .
New installation
Another year-long debate and fierce political and artistic controversies began in 1986 when Nordhorn council members demanded that the area, still officially known as Langemarckplatz, be renamed. Eventually the city council suspended this name, and a new name and concept for the memorial was sought.
In a submission dated April 5, 1988, the city of Nordhorn - clearly under the impression of the controversies that had also been carried out in the media since the name was suspended - spoke out against a renaming. However, the discussions did not abate because a large number of citizens continued to speak out in favor of a renaming. Even the Nordhorn Ecumenical Pastors' Conference spoke up and warned the city that retaining the name could be misunderstood by the media and "give the city the reputation of being part of a bad myth of the National Socialists". Nonetheless, on November 25, 1988, the council decided with a majority of votes from the CDU and parts of the SPD parliamentary group to rename Langemarckplatz to “memorial at Langemarckplatz”, i.e. to keep the name Langemarck , which is regarded as objectionable . what was viewed as quibbling and met with sharp criticism. The German-Dutch foundation Nooit Meer / Nie Wieder described this renaming as an “unbearable fraudulent label”. The city of Nordhorn probably did not understand that for the Dutch people, “who were attacked on May 10, 1940 in the spirit of Langemarck and held in a terrible hostage detention for four years, the absurd, stubborn adherence to the Nazi myth is absolutely nothing unbearable ”.
The clashes only came to a temporary end in 1991. The Nordhorn City Council decided unanimously not to use the controversial name for the time being. A final renaming was to be decided in the following legislative period of the council after the local elections in October 1991 and proposals for the redesign of the facility by the New York artist Jenny Holzer, who had meanwhile been commissioned, were awaited. In political circles, the media and among the citizens, however, the discussion about the possible new name continued and numerous suggestions were made. In March 1995 the CDU applied to re-establish the designation as a memorial on Langemarckplatz, but did not find a majority. The DKP's suggestion “Family Roozendal-Platz” was also rejected. Finally, the Nordhorn City Council decided to rename the square the Schwarzer Garten .
Once the dispute over the name was settled, a controversial discussion about the commissioning of Holzer , with whom a contract had been concluded in early 1992 , began almost simultaneously . Initially, it was about the cost of 135,000 German marks and the expected follow-up horticultural costs, which was quickly followed by content-related objections to Holzer's plans, which included the creation of an “anti-memorial” against war and National Socialism with the Black Garden.
Holzer's original plan was to remove the round base from the World War I memorial so that only the names of the fallen soldiers would have been preserved. Instead of the base should be in correspondence to the planted in the middle of the newly created Black garden black fruity apple tree Arkansas Black a mourning copper beech stand. A new location was to be found for the base element with the flame bowl, including the neighboring Schlieperpark .
The redesign of the facility was again controversial and heatedly discussed in the Nordhorn public; Among other things, a "citizens' initiative to secure the Nordhorn memorial" was formed. In 1994 the council stopped all pedestal relocation activities; the monument protection authorities dealt with the matter. In November 1994 - after the official opening - the council decided by a large majority not to have the base moved. Only the shell placed on top was removed. In this respect, the facility in its final form represented a compromise that did not correspond to Holzer's original intentions.
Holzer's work did not only meet with opposition in Nordhorn; In June 2005, the city parliament of Wiesbaden decided not to erect a memorial designed by Holzer for the victims of National Socialism.
The Black Garden was finally opened on May 8, 1995. Signs were put up to commemorate the design of the former facility and the name Langemarck. However, it took some time before the controversy was resolved.
The official commemorations of the city of Nordhorn on the occasion of the day of national mourning are held every year in the Black Garden . On May 8, the day the Second World War ended, the members and friends of the Dutch-German foundation Nooit Meer meet here - never again for a memorial event.
literature
- Wilhelm Horstmeyer: Against forgetting. Memorials to the victims of the wars and the tyranny in the city of Nordhorn. Heimatverein Grafschaft Bentheim, 1996, pp. 20–26.
- Brigitte Franzen : The Black Garden: The garden as an anti-memorial. A conversation with Jenny Holzer. In: Art Forum. 1999. Vol. 145, p. 88.
- Brigitte Franzen: Jenny Holzer's Black Garden in Nordhorn. About the translocation of a mythologized place and the contemporary remodeling of a war memorial. In: critical reports. Journal for art and cultural studies. No. 4 (1996), pp. 49-55.
- Hero's death in the tulip field. Black garden in Nordhorn. In: Udo Weilacher: In gardens. Profiles of current European landscape architecture. Birkhäuser, Basel et al. 2005, ISBN 3-7643-7084-X , p. 54ff.
- Angeli Sachs: Jenny Holzer's 'Black Garden' in Nordhorn. In: Hans Rudolf Meier, Marion Wohlleben (ed.): Buildings and places as carriers of memory. vdf Hochschulverlag, 2000, ISBN 3-7281-2732-9 , pp. 179–188.
- Kunstforum International: Volume 145, 1999, p. 88. Brigitte Franzen The Black Garden: The garden as an anti-memorial.
- Lebrecht Forke (Ed.): From Langemarckplatz to the Black Garden. (Nordhorn cultural contributions 4). City of Nordhorn.
- Eberhard Eckerle, Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn (ed.): Landscape - Architecture - Art - Design. Martin Meidenbauer Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-89975-076-4 .
- Werner Rohr: The Langemarckplatz in Nordhorn in: Yearbook of the Heimatverein 1991 pp. 57-62
Web links
- Black Garden in the Lower Saxony Monument Atlas
- Nordhorn.de: The Black Garden
- Grafschaft Bentheim Tourismus: Black Garden Nordhorn
- kunstwegen.org: Jenny Holzer
Individual evidence
- ^ The garden as an anti-memorial: Volume 145, 1999, p. 88. Kunstforum International
- ↑ Jenny Holzer: The Black Garden: The garden as an anti-memorial.
- ↑ Angeli Sachs: The traditional memorial and its contemporary reformulation. Jenny Holzer's 'Black Garden' in Nordhorn. P. 185.
- ↑ Color in the garden
- ^ Letter from the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold eV, local group Nordhorn, from December 19, 1924; City archive C VIII i 21 according to Lebrecht Forke (Hrsg.): From Langemarckplatz to the Black Garden. P. 14.
- ^ Nordhorner Nachrichten of January 10, 1927.
- ↑ Lebrecht Forke (Ed.): From Langemarckplatz to the Black Garden. P. 15.
- ↑ City Archives C VIII i 23 according to Lebrecht Forke (Ed.): From Langemarckplatz to the Black Garden. P. 15.
- ^ Nordhorner Nachrichten of November 25, 1929.
- ^ Nordhorner Nachrichten of December 6, 1929.
- ↑ Lebrecht Forke (Ed.): From Langemarckplatz to the Black Garden. P. 16/17
- ^ Werner Rohr: The Langemarckplatz in Nordhorn. In: Yearbook of the Heimatverein des Grafschaft Bentheim. 1991, pp. 57-61.
- ^ Ernst Kühle: Nordhorn currently the Mayor Henn 1927-1933. Yearbook of the Heimatverein des Grafschaft Bentheim. 1976.
- ^ Christoph Schütte: Parties and elections in Nordhorn. in: Nordhorn - Contributions to the 600-year history of the city. P. 275 ff.
- ↑ Lebrecht Forke (Ed.): From Langemarckplatz to the Black Garden. P. 16.
- ↑ City Archives C IV e 83 No. 147 of May 4, 1939 according to Lebrecht Forke (Ed.): From Langemarckplatz to the Black Garden. P. 16.
- ↑ Nordhorner Nachrichten of March 20, 1936.
- ^ Nordhorner Nachrichten of February 9, 1938.
- ↑ Lebrecht Forke (Ed.): From Langemarckplatz to the Black Garden. P. 17.
- ↑ Lebrecht Forke (Ed.): From Langemarckplatz to the Black Garden. P. 17.
- ↑ City Archives C IV e 83 No. 7 according to Lebrecht Forke (ed.): From Langemarckplatz to the Black Garden. P. 16.
- ^ Eduard Führ: Modernization of the City. About the connection between urban planning, rule and everyday culture . Jonas Verlag, 1989.
- ↑ City Archives C IV i 71 according to Lebrecht Forke (ed.): From Langemarckplatz to the Black Garden. P. 22.
- ↑ City Archives Minutes of the City Council 1956, according to Lebrecht Forke (Ed.): From Langemarckplatz to the Black Garden. P. 23.
- ^ Grafschafter Nachrichten of January 25, 1957: Südfriedhof - Langemarck Platz - Neuer Stadtpark .
- ^ Grafschafter Nachrichten of April 19, 1986: New name for Langemarckplatz .
- ↑ Based on a position paper of the administration penned by the then head of the cultural department Bernd Sundhoff and the department head for home and regional history of the VHS, Werner Rohr; lt. Lebrecht Forke (Ed.): From Langemarckplatz to the Black Garden. P. 26 note 42 and p. 28/29
- ↑ Lebrecht Forke (Ed.): From Langemarckplatz to the Black Garden. P. 29.
- ↑ Grafschafter Nachrichten: Council spoke out in favor of 'memorial on Langemarckplatz'.
- ^ Grafschafter Nachrichten of January 3, 1989: "Nooit Meer" wants to increase pressure .
- ↑ Lebrecht Forke (Ed.): From Langemarckplatz to the Black Garden. P. 31.
- ↑ The Roozendal family lived in Nordhorn. As far as the family members could not escape, they were deported to concentration camps from 1933 and murdered. The name of the family should be representative of all Nordhorn Nazi victims.
- ↑ Lebrecht Forke (Ed.): From Langemarckplatz to the Black Garden. P. 32, 34.
- ↑ Lebrecht Forke (Ed.): From Langemarckplatz to the Black Garden. P. 34.
- ↑ Angeli Sachs: Jenny Holzer's 'Black Garden' in Nordhorn. P. 183.
- ↑ Angeli Sachs: Jenny Holzer's 'Black Garden' in Nordhorn. Pp. 183/184