Missing the Grandeur
Berlin Holocaust Memorial
Memorials have a lot of emotions attached to them. In conventional war memorials, one feels the patriotism and symbolic triumph of the soldiers. Usually, the memorial is a sculpted representation of a soldier (or soldiers). Even memorials of individuals emanate a feeling of respect and admiration, usually once again represented in a realistic sculpture. These feelings are overwhelmingly positive.
Yet, I came across the Berlin Holocaust Memorial through internet links and digressions while reading an interview with American architect Peter Eisenman, who designed the memorial.
Eisenman’s memorial to the Jewish genocide in Germany constitutes of some 2,700 slabs of concrete steles in a huge area of land. It looks like a graveyard. The architect’s words describe it thus: “The place of no meaning”.
This memorial took more than ten years to build, wrought with controversies from the start.
But the question is: “Can memorials be built on negative emotions?"
The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin is built on such negativities, so much so that the architect felt it necessary to build it resembling a nameless cemetery.
Another memorial of such profound significance is the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. Protestors were so resistant to the converging shiny granite stones, again reminiscent of gravestones, that the designers had to include a sculpture of three soldiers alongside it. These soldiers apparently conveyed a better sense of patriotism and heroism that are often part of war memorials.
It might just be the problem with the modern world, where memorials no longer reflect deep, positive feelings. Instead, these very great modern ones seem to have been built to expiate our sins, or at the very least to find a quick ground to commemorate those we should be commemorating.
The grandeur and dignity no longer exists, and all we’re left with is empty feelings.
