of the Bundestag decision, the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (foundation) was founded by law and established in April 2000. It was headed by the president of the Bundestag. The bidding process and construction work on the memorial were to be carried out and supervised by the Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development. It soon became clear that the decision of the Bundestag was not the end of controversy. Not all issues had been clarified. While delays and problems caused by the construction of this complicated project could be overcome, one question could not be resolved easily because nobody at least not the Bundestag had discussed the issue in the first place: should certain companies, which had been in existence during the Nazi regime, actually be excluded from participating in the construction?
The Degussa debate
The Degussa debate showed how close history can be and how strongly the past still impinges on present-day German society. This debate erupted during construction work on the memorial. When it became known that the chemical firm Degussa was to participate in providing the antigraffiti coating for the memorial, the board of the foundation called for an abrupt halt to construction work. In the fall of 2003 an intense public debate took place in the media with intellectuals, politicians of all parties, and the general public, during which the past of the firm Degussa and other chemical firms in Europe and their involvement in Nazi crimes were researched and discussed. Degussa’s now defunct affiliate company Degesch had distributed Zyklon B to concentration camps and processed stolen Jewish gold during the Holocaust.
Three weeks later, after it became clear that the current firm Degussa only carried the name of its predecessor, had completely changed its structure, and was not run by the same people any more, the foundation’s board revised its earlier decision and allowed construction work to continue. A decisive reason for this reversal was the fact that there simply was no chemical firm in Germany that had not formerly been involved with either IG Farben or Degesch. They or their predecessors had conformed to the National Socialist racial policy, fired their Jewish managers and officials, and done business with the Nazis (Hayes 2001, 2004). Furthermore, it turned out that other chemicals used in the production of the concrete slabs and their foundation on the memorial site already contained ingredients that had in part been developed by Degussa or by Hoechst, also a successor of IG Farben. The devil was everywhere.
As the foundation’s managing director, I was a close witness of these conflicts and, together with all the people in charge of realizing the memorial project, under enormous pressure. My office did not have the power to decide on the selection of individual firms but, in my view, as a historian and a political administrator, it was not possible to build a memorial like this in Germany, on such historically contaminated ground, without the participation of German firms. It also seemed to me impossible to single out one firm. This was Germany. It was not going to be possible to produce a guilt-free memorial. But I also knew that the name Degussa, as a symbol, would cause pain for survivors. This conflict demonstrated the deep division between the memories of survivors and their descendants on the one hand, and those of the descendants of the perpetrator generations on the other. But of course the reactions were by no means homogeneous on either side. This was visible in the diverse articles and statements in the press, but also among members of the foundation’s advisory board. On the one hand, Alexander Brenner, chair of the Berlin Jewish Community, argued that Degussa should be excluded because the firm’s name was highly symbolic and would hurt survivors. He pointed out that he himself would probably not visit the memorial if Degussa were to participate. On the other hand, a speech by Michael Blumenthal, the American Jewish director of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, most significantly influenced members of the board in the opposite direction. Blumenthal said that he understood Brenner’s feelings, but that his own were different. He told the board that he had also lost relatives in the Holocaust, but that for him this was symbolized not so much by Zyklon B and Degesch as by the Reichsbahn that had deported them. He pointed out that victims associated their own experiences with different symbols, and questioned the assertion that the Zyklon B issue should exclude Degussa from participation in the building of the memorial (Krah 2004). In the end, the memorial was built with the participation of Degussa; and the debate has become part of the complicated history of the memorial. The history of this process is documented in the memorial’s information center. (See also Quack 2007, 49–75.)
Politics behind Memory: Underlying tensions
In the course of the Degussa debate, tensions between members of citizens’ groups and state and government officials became visible. Members of citizens’ groups were suspicious that political administrators and state officials could not adequately deal with the difficult and complex subject of Holocaust commemoration. Some representatives of citizens’ initiatives who were actively engaged in the preservation of original historical sites in Germany, and who viewed these places as the correct means of keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust, were especially critical of a central memorial in Berlin. Not only did they mistrust state and governmental officials, but they suspected that the memory of the victims would be exploited for ideological and political purposes. They also feared competition, the loss of visitors, and, last but not least, the loss of government funding for the original sites. These conflicts were also at the heart of the process of developing the historical concept for the center.
A brief introduction to the structure of the memorial foundation is necessary at this point. Funding for the project was fully provided by the government. The board of trustees (Kuratorium) was headed by Wolfgang Thierse, president of the Bundestag at that time, and consisted of 23 individuals representing the major political parties, the political administrations of the federal government and of the city of Berlin, and other groups, such as the Central Council of Jews in Germany and the Jewish Community of Berlin. Representatives from other memorial sites and museums, including the Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen and the Jewish Museum of Berlin, were also in the Kuratorium. The civilian group headed by the journalist Lea Rosh, who had initiated and promoted the idea of the memorial together with the historian Eberhard Jäckel, also played an important role on the board. (See the list of members of the Kuratorium in Stiftung Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas 2002.) This composition of the Kuratorium clearly expressed the wish of the Bundestag to integrate representatives of as many lobby groups concerned with the subject as possible, and not to exclude anybody. Since board members were at odds on a couple of questions carried over from the decade-long debate, and the Kuratorium included people who were reluctant even to accept a memorial, it was not easy for the president of the Bundestag to arrive at useful decisions.
The Kuratorium was eager to meet as often as possible to discuss the newest developments and to make decisions on every detail (or delay them). However, federal law required that the Kuratorium elect from its members a board of directors and establish an executive director with an administrative office for day-to-day operations. I was the director of the administrative office under the board of directors and carried out decisions made by the Kuratorium and the board of directors, which was also headed by Thierse. It would go beyond the scope of this chapter to describe in detail the various challenges faced by our small office, composed of a handful of academics and administrators. Caught between competing groups, administrations, politicians, and bureaucratic hierarchies, we tried to stay on course and to ensure the realization of the memorial. One of the major tasks, in addition to technical, legal, and public relations questions, involved establishing the historical concept for the projected exhibition about the Holocaust in the center. As was the case with the building process of the memorial, every detail of the exhibition concept encountered high sensitivities and generated contention.
Often diverse opinions clashed, and it was a great challenge to reconcile the multifaceted obligations to present horrific historical facts, remember and honor the dead, and point out the perpetrators.
Furthermore, the Bundestag, in a move that was criticized by many, decided to dedicate only the central memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust (Niven 2002; Leggewie and Meyer 2005). The decision acknowledged the uniqueness of the Shoah and the willingness
