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Index
Cemetery
Hall. Tor
Memorial
Tablets
Sale
e Tabacchi
The
Deserted Room
Luisenst. Canal Gardens
Comenius
Garden
Nat. Reserve Schöneberg
Russian Church
R.
Luxemburg Memorial
Cadillacs
in Concrete
Schildhorn
Column
Heerstraße
Cemetery
Kleist's
Grave
Mori-Ogai
Memorial
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In 1996 “Der verlassene Raum” (The Deserted Room), a bronze sculpture by
Karl Biedermann, was erected at the Koppenplatz – a landscaped square of
pleasant proportions. The sculpture won a local (East Berlin) authority
competition for a memorial to the Night of the Pogrom on the occasion of its
fiftieth anniversary.
The table, covered in leather and two matching chairs (one of which is
knocked over), are clearly a little larger than ordinary furniture and
strikingly realistic. It is only at close examination or by touching them
that you realize this is a bronze cast. The crude base-plate is textured
like a parquet floor, and has a band around it with verses from a collection
of poems published in 1947 by Nobel Prize winner Nelly Sachs (1891 Berlin –
1970 Stockholm): “...O die Wohnungen des Todes, (Oh the houses of death) /
Einladend hergerichtet ( invitingly appointed) / Für den Wirt des Hauses,
der sonst Gast war- (for the landlord of the house who was once a guest) / O
ihr Finger (Oh you fingers,) / Die Eingangsschwelle legend (Laying the
threshold) / Wie ein Messer zwischen Leben und Tod – (like a knife between
life and death) // O ihr Schornsteine, (Oh, you chimney stacks,) / O ihr
Finger, (Oh you fingers,) / Und Israels Leib im Rauch durch die Luft! (And
the body of Israel going up in smoke!).
In the courtyard of the house at number six Koppenplatz, there are further
traces of the past. A panel with a saying from the Baal Shem Tov announces
"Vergessen ist Verbannung. (To forget is banishment.) Erinnerung ist
Erlösung. (To remember is salvation”.) It is hung on a fire wall which has
been designed as an oversized plain page of an accounts book with the names
of the murdered Jewish owner of the house and her relatives recorded in the
form of a family tree. Among them is the name of a niece who escaped death.
She later sold number six Koppenplatz to the owners of the Galerie sphn who
installed the memorial work. It can be seen during the gallery’s opening
hours: Tue-Fri 2-7 p.m, Sat 12 p.m.-5 p.m. |
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