Rubble Woman Monument (Berlin-Neukölln)

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Rubble woman monument in the Hasenheide park

The rubble woman monument is a sculpture in memory of the achievements of the Berlin rubble women , who often cleared the rubble of the Second World War with their bare hands. The figure of the sculptor Katharina Szelinski-Singer from 1955 is in the Volkspark Hasenheide in Berlin-Neukölln .

Historical background

From 1952 the administrations in many German cities had monuments made and erected to commemorate the achievements of the rubble women . While the rubble women in the eastern sector were honored early on with the honorary title of “activist from the very beginning” and had prerogative in the allocation of living space, the recognition took a little longer in the west. It was only through a rousing speech by Louise Schroeder before the Bundestag in Bonn on September 30, 1949 that the committed mayor of Berlin managed to get Federal President Theodor Heuss to award 32 rubble women and 17 clearance workers with the Federal Cross of Merit on May 2, 1952 :

“And as a woman I have to say that here we have a downright duty of honor, a duty of honor to women who have stood on the street with their white hair for the purpose of clearing the rubble and who are suddenly unemployed because we can no longer pay them . "

Several hills had emerged from the rubble of the war in Berlin, including the Rixdorfer Höhe . The mountain was piled up from around 700,000 m³ of rubble in the Volkspark Hasenheide in Berlin-Neukölln . When it was released as a recreation center at Pentecost in 1954, the President of the House of Representatives Otto Suhr and Neukölln's District Mayor Kurt Exner proposed that a memorial should be erected to the rubble women on the rubble mountain.

The tenor of more recent scientific analyzes is that rubble women were emphasized in the discourse of the second half of the 20th century, especially in the old Federal Republic (FRG), in order to divert attention from the negatively connoted National Socialist past. The research assistant at the Eastern European Institute of the Free University of Berlin, Anna-Sophia Pappai, writes: “The early FRG came to terms with the past with the aim of defending against guilt or projecting guilt onto a few main responsible persons. The repression of one's own guilt was made easier by concentrating on the 'heroic' performance of the ('innocent') 'rubble women'. "

Monument history and inauguration ceremony

The trained stone sculptor Katharina Szelinski-Singer developed four models and, with the support of her teacher Richard Scheibe, was commissioned to design and execute them. The Berlin daily Telegraf noted on August 19, 1954:

“The idea [to erect a monument to the Berlin rubble women] has been taken up: Miss Singer, a student of the sculptor Prof. Scheibe, has already submitted four plasticine models of designs to the district office. However, before a decision is made as to which design should be carried out, the deputation for the park and garden affairs is heard. "

The memorial was the artist's first public commission after graduating from the Berlin University of the Arts and remained her largest commission throughout her life.

Kurt Exner ceremoniously presented the limestone figure to the public on April 30, 1955, and the former mayor of Berlin, Louise Schroeder, unveiled the monument on a slope on the Rixdorfer Höhe. Katharina Szelinski-Singer, her teacher Richard Scheibe, Otto Suhr , who has since been elected mayor , Paul Löbe and Hanna Reuter (widow Ernst Reuters ), as well as 88 former rubble women took part in the celebrations. The wind choir Karl Reichardt accompanied the celebration with the festive march by Handel and Ehret the work (to Freiligrath ) by Edgar Hansen. At the end of the day, the participants sang the workers' song, Brothers, for the Sun, for Freedom .

In 1986 the figure was "lovingly restored" by Katharina Szelinski-Singer and then placed in a new location in the lower part of the Volkspark at the northern entrance to Graefestrasse .

The figure

The memorial with a bundle of the Senior Protection Association

The limestone shell sculpture with the original title “Sitzende” shows a 2.40 meter high figure with a cape, headscarf and rough shoes. The hands are in the lap and hold a hammer . The thoughtful and tired drawn woman sits on a loose pile of bricks and looks sadly and thoughtfully at the sky. The bitter, melancholy expression can be found in many works by Katharina Szelinski-Singer, who worked purely figuratively and almost exclusively modeled female figures and female heads, preferably from natural stone . The art historian Helmut Börsch-Supan also finds the biographical traits that her works often bear in the monument to the rubble women:

“The breath of history can also be felt in the sculptor's work [...]. The war and post-war periods are part of this life. The »rubble woman« with the hammer in her lap and the bricks as a bench is a valid early major work into which much personal information has flowed. The reconstruction began after 1945 with laborious manual labor, and what was still usable had to be separated from the rubble, the greatest possible contrast to the abundance of goods today. The responsibility for the stone from which the shape is to be won is rooted in this time. "

The public and art critics received the work benevolently. According to Endlich / Wurlitzer, the monument depicts “not a heroic, but realistically tender and thoughtful image of women.” Criticism was sparked by details. One visitor complained that the memorial figure had tied the scarf at the back of the head. After all, at that time the knot was worn on top of the head: "Tying behind the head was considered rural".

From the more heroic monuments that Fritz Cremer the rubble workers of both sexes with the 1953-54 construction assistant and reconstruction workers in East Berlin had set, the artist knew at the time of their work according to their specification nothing; only later did she find out about this work.

For several years (as of 2007) in the lap of the figure in the summer months, flowers and containers from the Berlin Seniors' Protection Association (see photo). The jewelry is related to July 9th as a day of remembrance for the rubble women, which the Senior Protection Association Berlin Graue Panther e. V. started after a former rubble woman hanged herself in Berlin in 1986 - allegedly because she could no longer bear a rent increase with her low pension.

literature

  • Angela M. Arnold (Ed.): Trümmerbahn and Trümmerfrauen . OMNIS-Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-933175-57-7 .
  • Angela M. Arnold, Gabriele von Griesheim: rubble, railways and districts. Berlin 1945–1955 . Self-published, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-00-009839-9 .
  • Stefanie Endlich, Bernd Wurlitzer: Sculptures and monuments in Berlin . Stapp Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-87776-034-1 .
  • Käthe, Paula and all the rest . Lexicon of women artists. Reference book. Arranged: Carola Muysers u. a., publisher: Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen e. V. in cooperation with the Berlinische Galerie, Museum for Modern Art, Photography and Architecture. Kupfergraben Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-89181-411-9 .
  • City women. Artists show their city . Published by Kunstamt Steglitz. Exhibition catalog, Berlin 1991.
  • Katharina Szelinski-Singer: Sculpture work . With texts by Ursel Berger and Helmut Börsch-Supan. Ed .: Georg-Kolbe-Museum (exhibition catalog), Berlin 1987.
  • Katharina Szelinski-Singer: stone and bronze . With texts by Wolfgang Schulz. A publication by the Deutschlandhaus Foundation, Berlin. 1997, catalog for the exhibition Deutschlandhaus, October 19 – December 14, 1997; Meissen, Albrechtsburg February 8th – April 13th, 1998.
  • Herbert Wehner (Ed.): Honorable Member, you have the floor! Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, Bonn 1980, ISBN 3-87831-329-2 , pp. 34–42.

Web links

Commons : Trümmerfrau  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Herbert Wehner (Ed.): Mrs ...
  2. ↑ Katharina Szelinski-Singer: Stone and bronze . With texts by Wolfgang Schulz. ..., p. 16
  3. ↑ History ( Memento of the original from May 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at www.oei.fu-berlin.de. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.oei.fu-berlin.de
  4. ↑ Anna-Sophia Pappai: " Trümmerfrauen " and "Trümmermänner". Symbolic and real reconstruction work in Dresden and Warsaw after 1945 , in: Claudia Kraft (Ed.): Gender relations in East Central Europe after the Second World War , Munich 2008 (= Bad Wiesseer Tagungen des Collegium Carolinum), p. 55.
  5. ↑ Conversation with Katharina Szelinski-Singer , 1987 led by Ursel Berger (director of the Georg-Kolbe-Museum ), in: Ursel Berger, Helmut Börsch-Supan: Katharina… ,… (exhibition catalog), pp. 5–10
  6. ↑ Monument to the Rubble Woman . In: Telegraf , August 19, 1954
  7. ↑ According to the invitation card from the Neukölln district office for the celebration on April 30, 1955, 5:30 p.m. Reproduced in: Angela M. Arnold, Gabriele von Griesheim: Trümmer, Bahnen und Bezirke. ..., p. 78
  8. ↑ Wolfgang Branoner : Memorial in the Hasenheide . In: Berliner Morgenpost , April 26, 1987
  9. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan: On the artist and her work . In: Exhibition catalog, Katharina Szelinski-Singer: Stone and Bronze , p. 11
  10. ↑ Finally, Stefanie; Wurlitzer, Bernd: Sculptures ... , p. 72
  11. ↑ Quoted from Judith Luig: The activists of the late years . In: taz , July 11, 2005
  12. ↑ Personal information from Katharina Szelinski-Singer, August 21, 2007. The conversation with the artist, who was 89 at the time, was conducted by Edelgard Trubiroha, vice chairwoman of the Georg-Kolbe-Museum e. V. , and the first author of this article.
  13. ↑ It was Ruth-Sivia Niendorf. Her pension was allegedly DM 700  , the rent increase DM 78. Judith Luig: The activists of the late years . In: taz , July 11, 2005

Coordinates: 52 ° 29 ′ 15 ″  N , 13 ° 24 ′ 50 ″  E

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on October 8, 2007 .