Holocaust Memorial

About Holocaust Memorial

The decision to build a central memorial was made in 1992 following years of public debate. Design competition held twice; Eisenman's abstract grid design selected 1999 after Helmut Kohl rejected the first winner. Completed 2005. The underground information center was added as a more explicit complement to the abstract field.

In brief

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, occupies 19,000 square meters in the center of Berlin, between the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz, and consists of 2,711 grey concrete stelae of varying heights arranged in a grid on an undulating ground surface. The architect Peter Eisenman completed the memorial in 2005 after a fifteen-year design and political process. An underground information center beneath the field documents the Holocaust and the individual stories of its victims.

Berlin was made, 1992

The decision to build a central Holocaust memorial in Berlin was made in 1992, and the design competition was controversial, what form should the commemoration of six million murdered people take, and where should the burden of representation fall? Eisenman's winning design was chosen in 1999 after a second competition; Chancellor Helmut Kohl had rejected the first winner. The design is deliberately abstract, no imagery, no inscription, no explicit reference to Judaism or the Holocaust in the field itself, producing a space whose meaning requires the visitor to bring to it. The political debate about whether the memorial was too abstract, too central, or insufficiently explicit continued through and after construction.

Entering the field from any edge , the stelae begin at ground level and grow taller as the ground descends, eventually surrounding visitors with concrete blocks rising several meters above head height. The disorientation produced by the changing height and ground level is deliberate. The information center underground requires a separate queue; it documents the chronology of the Holocaust, the fate of individual families, and the memorial's design process. Children frequently play between the stelae, which the memorial's administrators have stated is acceptable. S-Bahn and U-Bahn to Brandenburger Tor station. The memorial is a 5-minute walk south of the Brandenburg Gate on Cora-Berliner-Strasse.

The Experience

A field of 2,711 grey stelae on undulating ground whose increasing height creates disorientation as visitors move toward the center, with an underground information center documenting individual Holocaust victims and the memorial's design history.

Why It Matters

The Holocaust Memorial is Germany's central act of public remembrance for the Holocaust and the most debated memorial design of the twentieth century, a deliberate choice of abstraction over representation that placed the burden of meaning on the visitor.

Why Visit

The field is physically affecting in a way that no photograph prepares you for, the disorientation of the stelae surrounding you, the sound changing, the city disappearing as you move toward the center. The information center underground gives the abstraction names and faces.