|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
Unlike the memorial in Berlin,
the nearby Sachsenhausen Memorial is situated on the site
of a concentration camp, where 200,000 people were imprisoned
in the camp between 1936 and 1945. After a brief period where
the site was used as a Soviet special camp, a memorial was
instituted in 1961. Intended to symbolize the "victory
of anti-fascism over fascism," the memorial utilized
the remaining original buildings, restored to allow them to
be used for permanent exhibitions. |
|
|
|
 |
|
In 1998, a competition was held
for a museum and information center at the memorial, won by
HG Merz. According to the architect, "it aims to make
the harrowing reality of the camp tangible, and to illustrate
totalitarian geometry, without engulfing visitors in information,
and instead enabling them to arrive at their own conclusions...it
provides a fitting and dignified memorial that encourages
intense reflection." This description mirrors the prevailing
minimalism of memorials, from Maya Lin's Vietnam
Veteran's Memorial to Daniel Libeskind's empty Jewish
Museum in Berlin. |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
At Sachsenhausen,
visitors follow a route through a gap in a long wall, to an
expansive plaza, and into a courtyard
open to the sky. Adjacent to this space are the old furnaces,
covered by translucent panels
that protect them from the elements while standing in stark
contrast to the ruins they enshroud. This is what sets this
memorial apart from others; instead of referring to history
via its own minimalism and/or exhibitions, this memorial refers
to history via a juxtaposition with the past. In a way it
makes the minimalism of the design excusable, and perhaps
more profound.
|
| |
|
|
Sachsenhausen Memorial in Oranienburg, Germany,
by HG Merz Architekten Museumsgestalter |
2007.05.28 |
|
| |
|
Click
on images below for larger views.
|
| |
|
|
|
