stelae and been emotionally moved, would look for a place to rest in the subterranean center. Here they could in a cautious and dignified manner get some orientation with regard to questions they might have. They would enter a foyer with information about the memorial itself and about other institutions at original sites. The first room, programmatically called Room of Silence, would provide benches to rest and contemplate, but contain only very basic information about the number of victims and the countries they came from. In addition, there would be one or two quotes on the specific interpretations of the Holocaust (“rupture in civilization,” “singularity”). The second room (Room of Fates) would exhibit up to 12 large photos of Jewish families from different cultural, social, and national backgrounds on the walls in combination with some information on their personal fates during the Holocaust. In the third room (Room of Names), visitors would see names of murdered Jews in fluorescent letters on the walls, and would be able to search for names in the Yad Vashem collection of names in a computer database. The last room (Room of Sites) would contain maps and information on the geographical dimension of the mass murder across Europe (Quack 2002, 249–262). That was all. With the exception of the family portraits in the second room and access to the Yad Vashem database, there was no attempt to personalize and individualize the fates of the victims. Since space was limited, people were not supposed to linger at the center, but rather to pass through it quickly. This was an understandable aim considering the expected numbers of visitors in relation to the small space. However, this first draft had serious flaws: there was great resistance to any attempt to include museological and educational considerations in the discussion. This first working group did not address the crucial questions regarding how to approach a historical event of horrific mass murder and genocide in an exhibition that would be visited and viewed by visitors of all ages, and how to contextualize the events and to make visible the perpetrators in an exhibition dedicated to the victims.
As a consequence, the working group was enlarged to include museum experts such as Christoph Stölzl, the founding director of the new Berlin Historical Museum, prominent historian of Jewish history Monika Richarz, and other well-known historians of the Holocaust, National Socialism, and resistance, such as Ulrich Herbert, Wolfgang Benz, and Peter Steinbach. They had all advised historical exhibitions before. Aleida Assmann, an expert in cultural studies who had done extensive work on history and collective memory, was also asked to participate, and commented on the process from time to time. In addition, the active involvement of young historians employed at the managing office of the foundation (Ulrich Baumann, Eva Brücker, Stephanie Fischer, Jürgen Lillteicher, and Uwe Neumärker) made possible a broader discussion and helped introduce necessary changes to the concept, which would eventually be discussed and confirmed by the Kuratorium. Among the members of the Kuratorium who wanted to provide more content and advocated a less minimalistic concept for the future center was its chairman, Wolfgang Thierse. Of like mind was Wolfgang Benz, head of the advisory committee. Most successful in bridging the gaps between content, design, and architectural interests, and in gaining the support of undecided members of the Kuratorium, was Salomon Korn who, together with exhibition designer Dagmar von Wilcken, architect Peter Eisenman, my colleague Günter Schlusche, and myself, became part of another working group (Design) which the Kuratorium commissioned to decide on the relationship between content and design.
Designing the information center: Continuity or counterpoint?
The discussion about the design for the first room alone (Room of Silence) lasted three years. These years witnessed numerous controversies and clashes between the often diverging interests of the parties involved. The plans of the exhibition designer Dagmar von Wilcken, whose concept won the contest for the conception of the center, fanned some of these discussions. She was the only woman who took part in the contest. Her concept was unique in that it took up Eisenman’s aesthetic language. Von Wilcken perceived the merit of the entire project to lie in its form as a coherent ensemble with various functions. She did not fear the “subordination” of the information center under the memorial and aimed at congruity with the overall architectural concept: “It seemed completely logical to take up the language of the field of stelae and to continue it in different variations. In each exhibition space visitors are constantly reminded, through various manifestations of the stelae motif on the floor, hanging down from the ceiling, extending from the walls that they are beneath the memorial” (Quack and Von Wilcken 2005, 44).
In contrast, the proposals of the other competitors tended to create a counterpoint to Eisenman’s memorial with the design of the information center: their aesthetic language deliberately pursued an independent concept. These designs wanted to avoid any sort of artistic quotation, repetition, or submission to the memorial. Without exception, the proposals were of high quality and very original. But Dagmar von Wilcken’s design quickly convinced me and, soon after, the board of the foundation and the majority of Kuratorium members. In the period that followed, individual issues were intensely and at times even fiercely disputed, and Von Wilcken had to defend her conception patiently on several occasions. She revised details where it was unavoidable, but otherwise calmly and persuasively stuck to her position, even when her patience was repeatedly put to the test.
A public symposium held in Berlin in November 2001 (Quack 2002) made great ideas and demands regarding the site came to light. Some of the contested issues could not be resolved, but they were in any case debated in a very dedicated manner. The biggest cause of dispute was the administrative office’s draft for the exhibition script. My colleagues and I had developed a version that was based on the original concept but deliberately surpassed it. It contained aesthetic as well as educational elements, and the concept was enriched by the ideas of the art historians, historians, and museum curators present at the symposium. One of the changes that we introduced was the renaming of the first room to Room of Events instead of Room of Silence. In our view, it was important to add more content to the basic concept. In the end, however, we were unable to reconcile the contradictory views and expectations, and we could not reach a consensus. Ultimately the issues were politically resolved within the Kuratorium (Baumann 2011).
Interestingly, most of the participants of the symposium vehemently rejected Von Wilcken’s concept, advocating a more independent design for the information center. For the most part, they were worried about whether or not the design, which took up the artistic form of the stelae, would be able to act as the center’s cognitive and educational counterpart to the abstract memorial. A central concern was that the exhibition might become another “emotional staging,” perhaps even a “sacralization” that would neglect the information one wished to convey. Here, too, the old contentious points flared up again: Should the ensemble host a great memorial with as little explanation as possible or should we rather invest in learning centers, preferably at the original historical sites? In addition, new contradictions soon arose. This became apparent in the design of the first room. Von Wilcken’s original concept envisioned a dark space with illuminated glass showcases, an idea that had arisen from the historians’ original concept of it as a room of silence. The idea of these showcases embedded in the floor and containing a minimum of information was fiercely disputed on several occasions.
Contemplation versus information
The debates often revolved around purported opposites: emotion versus elucidation, contemplation versus information, remembrance versus the provision of information. While these discussions were certainly justified, they often became strangely abstract, even ideological. From the outset, they appeared to focus on various ascriptions guided by diverging expectations that did not do justice to the complex process of conveying historical knowledge in an exhibition. The fates of individual victims of the Holocaust were supposed to be the focus of attention. Only in the course of deciding on the texts and images, and as a result of serious attempts to find a compromise between the diverging ideas, did the antagonistic parties arrive at reasonable solutions.
The debate surrounding the glass showcases on the floor and their planned inscription with the original testimonies of victims of the Holocaust is symptomatic of this. Resistance toward this concept in the first room was
