That was not necessarily to be expected: the artist Kirsten Zeitz and the historian Maximilian Strnad spread confidence after the presentation of their new concept for a “place of remembrance for forced labor in the Lohhof flax roasting plant”. She was “in good spirits,” said Zeitz, and confessed that she was very keen to later make something really good out of the compromise that was born out of sheer necessity for a commemoration of Nazi crimes. “We don’t lose anything,” said even Strnad. Both suffered a severe setback in March 2020 when their plans for a memorial, which had been worked out to the last detail, ended up in the wastepaper basket because shortly before implementation it turned out that the property for the planned central learning location on the corner of Carl-von-Linde-/Johann -Kotschwara-Strasse does not belong to the municipality. Now, with the help of augmented reality – i.e. supplementary virtual content on the web – this shortcoming is to be largely eliminated.
The Nazi dictatorship collapsed 77 years ago. And to this day, the extent of the injustice committed has not yet been recorded everywhere, let alone known. Only a few years ago, the Unterschleißheim local historian Wolfgang Christoph, who died in spring 2022, recalled the suffering of the forced laborers in the flax roasting plant in Lohhof, where flax was extracted in the wartime economy to obtain fabrics for uniforms, for example. The historian Maximilian Strnad wrote a scientific paper about it in 2010 and then presented a widely acclaimed plan for a place of remembrance, the artistic design of which Kirsten Zeitz took on. It is now clear that despite the setback two years ago, your work was not in vain. The basic features of the plan remain the same.
The memorial at the vocational and technical college will be expanded. There should be more portrait busts and information steles.
(Photo: Florian Froese-Peeck)
It is about three elements: A path of remembrance will lead further from Lohhof station under the train to the corner of Carl-von-Linde-/Johann-Kotschra-Straße. This path, which many of the exploited had to walk every day when they arrived by train, will be marked with concrete flax blossoms in the ground and at the edge of the path steel strips will be embedded in the ground on which the names of known forced laborers are named. A memorial site will be created as a second element at the vocational and technical college with information desks and portrait sculptures to tell the biographies of some of the exploited. The biggest change is necessary at the place of learning, at the end of the path, where parts of the factory still exist today, where people had to toil twelve hours a day, six days a week and endured many humiliations.
QR codes should open the way to images, texts and films for smartphone owners
This place was particularly important to Strnad and Zeitz in order to offer visitors an emotional bridge into the past. But the owner of the site has other plans. The city itself speaks of a development area for a new district, which suggests that the historic building fabric will disappear. The city is in talks with the owner. An attempt should be made to achieve a “curatorial designation of the historical site” and to integrate the place of learning into the future district. Until then, as a temporary measure, a stele with a QR code, which can be easily removed later on – if necessary – should stand on a gravel surface surrounded by shrubs, which takes the visitor on their smartphone to a specially programmed, virtual world enriched with many pictures, texts and also films abducted, in which the horrors of forced labor are made comprehensible.
With the virtual addition, Strnad said, an authentic experience will be possible there. If you scan the QR code, you can see the former flax roasting factory building on your smartphone, the barracks for the forced laborers that no longer exist and the factory’s own bunker. “The emphatic point of contact at the end of the path of memory is preserved without installations,” write Strnad and Zeitz in their revised concept.
A historical photograph of the Lohhof flax roasting factory building.
(Photo: private)
Further development is possible for the future. First of all, information desks and portrait sculptures originally planned at the learning location will also be set up at the enlarged memorial site at the FOS. But elements in the city should also be placed on green spaces in order to let the memory have an effect on the city. According to Strnad and Zeitz, the possibility of naming the place where the monument is located at the school after Elisabeth Heims is being examined. In July 1941, the Aryanization Office obliged them to do forced labor at the Flachsröste Lohhof GmbH. From there she was deported to Kaunas on November 20, 1941, along with 63 other women from Flachröste, and murdered five days later. Streets in the new district could also be named after forced laborers.
Maximilian Strnad published his book Flax for the Reich in 2010.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
The provisional situation inevitably leads to the place of remembrance being understood as an ongoing project. That also fits in with the fact that the work goes on anyway. To this day, not all the names of those who were exploited and murdered are known. There should therefore be empty spaces without names on the metal strips at the edge of the path of remembrance to commemorate these anonymous victims. Above all, the residents of Unterschleißheim and all interested parties should continue to work through the depressing historical facts. Further workshops are planned at the high school, where many biographies of victims have already been developed and included in a podcast that can be accessed in the Actionbound app. The opening of the analog-virtual place of remembrance is now planned for July 2023.