The Ghosts of the Memorial A Visual Exploration of the Holocaust Memorial Berlin - by Roland Groebe

Roland Groebe

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... of the Memorial

Editorial Team Batsceba Hardy - Chief editor Robert Bannister Michael Kennedy Fabio Balestra Concept Batsceba Hardy Graphic Design Batsceba Hardy Massimo Giacci

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Adult Content The photographies on this book are realized by capturing moments of daily life in public places and have been realized without a lucrative purpose with exclusively cultural and artistic intent.

Roland Groebe

The Ghosts of the Memorial A Visual Exploration of the Holocaust Memorial Berlin

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The omission is all the more strange, as the experience of traversing the field of stelae, which was designed by the American architect Peter Eisenman, is, in itself, strong and complex.

Description of the Memorial Just south of the Brandenburg Gate is Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, with its 2,711 gray concrete slabs, or stelae. They are identical in their horizontal dimensions (reminiscent of coffins), differing vertically (from eight-inches to more than 15-feet tall), arranged in a precise rectilinear array over 4.7 acres, allowing for long, straight, and narrow alleys between them, along which the ground undulates.

In the shallow corner of the plaza, tourists sit and chat on benchhigh stelae, children climb, all enjoy wide-open and thrillingly grand perspectives on the surroundings, including the Tiergarten to the west, and the installation takes on the cast of an austere yet pleasantly welcoming park.

The installation is a living experiment in montage, a Kuleshov effect of the juxtaposition of image and text. And the text in question is the title of the memorial: in German, Denkmal für die Ermordeten Juden Europas a Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

But, upon entering the narrow alleys and plunging between higher and higher slabs, perspectives are sliced to a ribbon, other visitors are cut off from view, and an eerie claustrophobia sets in - even as some visitors (not just children) play games of hideand-seek in the rectilinear maze.

Meaning

The memorial also evokes a graveyard for those who were unburied or thrown into unmarked pits, and several uneasily tilting stelae suggest an old, untended, or even desecrated cemetery.

Without that title, it would be impossible to know what the structure is meant to commemorate. There’s nothing about these concrete slabs that signifies any of the words of the title, except, perhaps, “memorial” - insofar as some of them, depending on their height, may resemble either headstones or sarcophagi. So it’s something to do with death. And as for the title itself - which murdered Jews? When? Where?

It’s a memorial to one of the murdered Jews of Europe. Eisenman’s installation commemorates the six million murdered Jews collectively; but there is no more a collective death than there is a collective life; an appropriate memorial would commemorate six million times one.

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Who are the Ghosts?

The translation of this sentiment and the concept for the visual interpretation of the project came to me pretty quickly.

Many years ago, when visiting the memorial for the first time, I had no detailed knowledge of the architect Peter Eisenmann and the intention behind his idea: to build a place in which to confront and come to terms with contemporary German history – right in the heart of our capital.

I realized I wanted to depict the people in this setting as blurred entities, as Ghosts of the Memorial, apparitional, their movements out of focus. Walking past me without noticing me or looking directly at me without really seeing me.

At first, I came without a camera, as an observer of the situation, capturing the mood and reflecting on my own perception. How does it change when experienced at different times of the day or the year? How do people behave in this place in the middle of Berlin and how do I perceive them in that particular moment?

With time the images gained focus, thus reproducing my perception. Direct looks full of questions, doubt and expectations – or averted and introverted, distant from the immediate moment, yet always present.

I quickly realized that I deemed these people inseparable of time and space. Weren’t they, in fact, mirrors of those whose fate is shown here in such a palpable way? As protagonists on a historic stage that serves us as a memorial!

With great respect for the past, the victims, the survivors and the bereaved, it is my wish to interpret the memorial through my lens.

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Roland Groebe is a German street photographer, living and working in Berlin.

Born in 1964, Roland came to photography later than most. He started photographing the streets of Berlin in 2005.

He specialized in street photography, primarily focussing on the relationship between people, the city, disposed goods, and street signs. His shots are meant to connect the dots: What is the underlying code of interaction, how do we communicate with the world that surrounds us, both openly and subconsciously?

His work was published at The Eye Photo Magazine, Stern Magazine, art-Das Kunstmagazin, National Geographic and We Street 2015 – Street Photography Book, WSP World Street Photography Book 2018.

Tokyo International Foto Award - 2017 Honorable Mention Winner MonoVisions Photography Award - 2018 Honorable Mention Winner Finalist of The Independent Photographer’s “Street Photography” Competition 2019 He won the reader’s choice award of art-Das Kunstmagazin.

Group Exhibitions “Berlin 1020 Collective”, Alghero Street Photography Awards, Alghero, Italy 2018 Different Exhibitions at Blank Wall Gallery, Athens, Greek 2018 Roland Groebe is a founding member of the Berlin Street Collective “Berlin1020”

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