Many cities find it difficult to come to terms with the past. This is shown in Munich not least by the highly explosive debate about the polluted street names. Elsewhere there is less intense discussion or even collective silence. In Munich, too, individual artists, committed local historians, associations or associations of women historians often devote themselves to these gaps in the culture of remembrance. Who are the people who look into the dark corners of the city’s history and try to make them visible to everyone?
Munich’s almost forgotten arson attack
On the night of January 7, 1984, two men carried out an arson attack on a restaurant in Munich’s Bahnhofsviertel. In the Liverpool nightclub on Schillerstrasse, 30 people celebrate when burning petrol cans are thrown into the entrance of the bar. Eight guests are injured, including 20-year-old Corinna Tartarotti, who works at the bar there that night. She dies three months after the attack as a result of severe burn injuries. The two perpetrators escape but are later arrested. The men are part or even the core of a right-wing and fundamentalist terrorist cell. Between 1977 and 1984, the so-called “Ludwig Group” carried out several attacks in Germany and northern Italy, resulting in several deaths.
The Munich victim and the crime had been forgotten for a long time. For three years, the “Antisexist Action Munich (Asam)” – a loose alliance of left-wing feminist activists – has been working on the case. “We focus on organizing protests against radical anti-abortion opponents, but our political practice also includes remembrance work,” says Nina Stern, spokeswoman for the group. Since the perpetrators were people who, in addition to extreme right-wing ideas, also pursued anti-feminist ideologies, Asam began to deal more intensively with the crime and organized commemorative events in the station district. “We want to point out that there is continuity in the actions of the Ludwig group, the Oktoberfest attack, the NSU murder series or the attack on the OEZ. The security authorities, but also society, do not seem to have learned anything from this,” says Stern.
During their research, two freelance journalists from the network of activists even found Corinna Tartarotti’s grave, which she thought had disappeared, in the Sendlinger Friedhof. The Antifascist Information, Documentation and Archive Office Munich e. V. (Aida) has meanwhile taken over the costs for the grave site and secured it until 2032. The case has also reached the City Council. In January, the city council factions of Die Linke/Die Party, SPD/Volt and Grüne/Rosa Liste jointly applied for a commemorative plaque on Schillerstrasse to commemorate the attack in the future.
Help for relatives of the so-called Nazi euthanasia murders
Between 1939 and 1945, the Nazi regime murdered around 300,000 mentally ill and disabled people in a state-controlled extermination program. More than 2,000 Munich residents were among the victims of these “euthanasia” murders, the second largest group of victims of the Nazi terror state in the city. Sybille von Tiedemann has set up a website so that her relatives are not left alone with fate and have a contact point. There, the historian supports those who are looking for answers to a painful chapter in their own family history and, last but not least, the history of the city.
“Many relatives are surprised that there are still files about their relatives in the archives,” she says. However, these are often not so easy to track down for laypersons. “It may be that there is something in a clinic’s memory. Other documents are in the Federal Archives – or somewhere else entirely,” she says. Those who are at the beginning of the research have to overcome many hurdles and are often turned away. She wanted to do something to counteract this, “so that the victims would have a worthy place in their memories.” The historian worked for years as part of the working group Psychiatry and Welfare under National Socialism in Munich. On behalf of the NS-Document Center she worked on the “Memorial Book for the Munich Victims of the National Socialist ‘Euthanasia’ Murders”, which was published in 2018. To do this, she viewed more than 1,300 case histories and typed hundreds of names from deportation lists. In conversations with the bereaved, she noticed that they faced similar problems despite the individual fates of their relatives. How can the entries in the medical history be interpreted? What does a diagnosis made at that time mean? “I wanted to create a guide on how family members can deal with this and at the same time strengthen their desire for answers,” she says. The website www.ns-euthanasie-auffertigung.de and a group of relatives that meets regularly were created.
Since the murders were controlled from the Eglfing-Haar sanatorium and nursing home, it is not so easy to find a good historical place of remembrance in Munich, says Tiedemann. Nevertheless: “These were Munich citizens, there should be something here in the cityscape that reminds them of them.” She also hopes that the head of the city of Munich will show his face and be present at the commemoration day for the victims of Nazi euthanasia on January 18th. “We have always invited the mayor, so far he has always sent a representative,” she says. Local politicians have understood that the issue needs more attention. At the end of April, Die Linke, Die Grünen/Rosa Liste as well as Volt and SPD jointly requested that the Nazi past be discussed in the Munich health system and that the victims should also be more present.
On the Freedom Square in Neuhausen, twelve slender steles by the artist Wolfram Kastner (pictured) commemorate former resisters against National Socialism.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
He is a pioneer of the culture of remembrance, the most prominent among the Munich protest artists. Some say that Wolfram Kastner is only concerned with provoking. He himself says: “I’ve been doing this for many years and have experienced the most adventurous things. I don’t provoke, the conditions provoke me.” Above all, the attitude of the public authorities to the “remembrance discourse” or “remembrance work”, as he prefers to call it, annoys him. The discussion takes place in the confrontation and not in the one-sided design of memorials that no one understands anymore.
“For many things, the city says: We have a very modern form of remembrance, and because nobody recognizes it as such, it doesn’t bother the cityscape,” says Kastner. He alludes to the monument to the failed Hitler assassin Georg Elser. In 2009, a light work of art by a Frankfurt artist was installed in Maxvorstadt in memory of the resistance fighter. In the end, not even the original initiators of the monument, associated with the Munich Georg Elser Initiative, liked the design that emerged from a municipal competition. Or Kastner means the virtual audio tour “Memory Loops”, which uses hundreds of sound tracks to lead to Nazi terror crime scenes in Munich – but mainly breaks through the virtual city map. “Where things get uncomfortable, people hang around and shy away from the public eye,” he says.
Naturally, Wolfram Kastner likes his own projects better, for example the temporary “resistance monument” on Platz der Freiheit in Neuhausen. The city recently extended this for the third time. The twelve stelae may remain there for another twelve years. On it you can see people and their biographies who opposed the Nazi regime of terror. “This memorial is very close to my heart because it gives a face to the unknown,” he says. Somehow the city doesn’t manage to perpetuate this monument. Just as little as a worthy memory of Kurt Eisner. For decades he has been campaigning for the neglected legacy of the prime minister with the association “The Other Bavaria”. “After all, this is the founder of the Free State of Bavaria. Why can’t he get back the honorary grave he had in 1922?”
A real Neuhauser in search of history
Franz Schröther has also had dealings with Wolfram Kastner – and perhaps even helped him with his preliminary research on the memorial for the Bavarian railway troops who died in the First World War. The Neuhauser local researcher did not really like the fact that the artist then simply changed the propaganda inscription of the National Socialists on the monument on Dachauer Straße. “It was a typical Kastner action,” says the 75-year-old, “but it’s not my style.” Schröther prefers to work with files or rummage through flea markets for postcards and pictures.
Born in Neuhauser, he has been active at the history workshop in Neuhausen-Nymphenburg for almost 30 years and has contributed to the fact that the people of Munich now know a lot more about this district than they used to. Schröther grew up in the district, used to work at the post office and in recent years has covered thousands of kilometers through his district on the district tours – he does 50 to 60 a year. “I’m a full-time volunteer working 40 to 50 hours a week,” he says.
It is important to him that the history of the district is remembered correctly. “It’s hard to believe what rumors and legends there are about Neuhausen. And they keep getting published, even in books,” he says. In November’s new Geschichtswerkstatt publication, he therefore devotes an entire chapter to this phenomenon. It will then also deal with Wolfgang Rank’s life, who was known as “Christ of Neuhausen” at the beginning of the 20th century and about whom many myths circulate. “I don’t see myself as a preservationist, but as a fact,” he says – before he has to take the next tour through Renatastrasse.