Wikipedia:WikiProject Stolpersteine/Stolpersteine in Munich

German version

Stolpersteine is the German name for stumbling blocks collocated all over Europe by German artist Gunter Demnig. They remember the fate of the victims of Nazi Germany being murdered, deported, exiled or driven to suicide. Generally, the stumbling blocks are posed in front of the building where the victims had their last self chosen residence.

Most of the Stolpersteine in Munich, the capital of Bavaria, are stored in a cellar as the City Counsel interdicted their collocation on public grounds. Only 53 Stolpersteine could be collocated in the doorways of houses, on private grounds (status of July 2017). Three Stolpersteine for Munich are currently shown in an exhibition hall in Munich, two in a museum show in Leipzig.

The lists are sortable; the basic order follows the alphabet according to the last name of the victim.

History
Gunter Demnig has collocated thousands of Stolpersteine in all major cities of Germany but Munich. In the Bavarian capital, the installations of stumbling stones on public grounds were prohibited after Demnig's first request in 2003. The City Council has twice decided — in accordance with the local Jewish community — that this project does not constitute an appropriate way to remember the victims.

Laying and removal of the first two Stolpersteine
When Demnig asked mayor Christian Ude (SPD) for permits in March 2003, his request was declined three months later by the Council of Elders of the City of Munich. Nevertheless, in May 2004 Demnig posed two stumbling stones on request of Peter Jordan, the son of victims Paula and Siegfried Jordan, both mordered in Kaunas in 1941. Yehoshua Chmiel

On 15 June 2004, the City Counsel voted on the issue if Stolpersteine should be permitted on public ground. A vast majority said no, only PDS, Rosa Liste and the Green Party voted in favor of the collocations. Within 24 hours after the decision, the first two Stolpersteine in Munich were removed from Mauerkircherstraße 13, the last self chosen residence of the Jordan family. Peter Jordan was not informed about their removal by city officials and their deposition at the Jewish cemetery. He was upset and reacted harshly: "It was as if my parents were desecrated a second time." When asked why exactly Munich has such problems with remembrance, he responded: "Sometimes I feel that people do not want to be reminded and do not want to be pulled out of their Gemütlichkeit."

Thereafter, the Stolpersteine for Paula and Siegfried Jordan were installed at the Führerbau from 2005 to 2011 (until they were removed again by city officials for "fire protection"). In 2015, they formed part of an exhibition at the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn. For one day in January 2017, they returned to Munich, for a ceremony with Peter Jordan, then 93, and his wife in front of the building where he and his parents once lived and where the two Stolpersteine were collocated for two months in spring of 2004. In 2017, Zeitgeschichtliches Forum Leipzig.

Symbolic collocations
In 2005, two symbolic installations took place in Munich. On 17 February, author and TV moderator Amelie Fried organized a ceremony at Frundsbergstraße 8 for her relatives Lilli Fried née Schwarzschild (1887-1943) and Max Fried (1879-1943). On 5 April, in front of a building in Herzog-Max-Straße another symbolic laying took place. The Stolpersteine to be collocated there were dedicated to Gisela Goldlust (1875-1942) and Leopold Paul Goldlust (1876-1939). The ceremony was instigated by sponsor Hans-Dieter Klein from Vienna, a nephew of Mrs. Goldlust.

Stored Stolpersteine
As the Fried and Goldlust Stolpersteine could not be collocated, they were stored by the Munich initiative for Stolpersteine in a cellar in the centre of the city. Since sponsors continued to order Stolpersteine but the city still did not allow their collocation, the number of stored plaques by the years grew to 245 (status from July 2017). The stored Stolpersteine are safely secured and ordered by alphabet, awaiting their final destination.

Public debates
The public opinion in Munich is split in two groups and there are fierce debates going on between them since 2003:


 * Charlotte Knobloch is widely considered as the main opponent of Stolperstein collocations in Munich. She has served as president of the Jewish community in Munich and Upper Bavaria since 1985 and in important functions in several national and international federations between 1997 and 2013 (Zentralrat, EJC and WJC). She gained the support of the majorities of the local Jewish community and of the City Counsel, especially from the CSU, the FDP and from most representatives of the ruling SPD. Both her deputies in the Jewish community, Yehoshua Chmiel and Abi Pitum, support her position. Knobloch is an honorary citizen of Munich since 2005. She considers it unbearable to read the names of murdered Jews on tablets in the pavement being "trampled" upon. Knobloch: ″The people murdered in the Holocaust deserve more than an inscription in the midst of dust, street filth, and even worse defilement.″ She also fears the desecration and destruction of these monuments. Manche dieser Beschädigungen werden in rechtsextremen Medien auf hämische Weise kommentiert.


 * The most outspoken advocates for the Stolperstein collocations in Munich are Peter Jordan, the son of two victims of the Shoah, and Terry Swartzberg, a member of Munich's Reformed Jewish congregation Beth Shalom. Since 2011, Swartzberg has being chairing the local Stolperstein committee. In 2015, the Stolperstein supporters collected more than 80.000 signatures in favor of collocations in Munich, among them many intellectuals and artists. This initiative was also backed by representatives of other victim groups, like Roma and Sinti, former inmates of the Dachau concentration camp, gays and lesbians etc. The promoters of Stolperstein collocations respond that in order to be able to read the inscription one has to bow and thus pay respect to the victim. All monuments, they say, can be defiled and/or destroyed regardless where they are located and how they are constructed.

Knobloch is widely isolated in this matter within the Jewish communities of Germany. Both her successors as president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann and Josef Schuster, are backing Deming's project — and the vice president of the Central Council, Salomon Korn, who even wrote about "bogus arguments" on Knobloch's side. Also the former president of the Union of progressive Jews in Germany and current chairman of the second largest Jewish community of Munich (Beth Shalom), Jan Mühlstein, took a stand in favor of the Stolpersteine. Demnig himself denied Knobloch's metaphor "to tread on fate," and considers it a trivialization of Nazi crimes. "If the Nazis were content with stepping on Jews, then people would have gotten bruises, but they would still be alive. The Nazis however had an extermination program."

Until July 2017, all attempts to convince the local politicians to reverse their decision were in vain.

Installation in the former Führerbau
The so-called “Führerbau”, Hitler's headquarters in Munich, was erected between 1933 and 1937. It was in this building, where the Munich Agreement was signed by Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler and Mussolini. Nowadays, the building is used by the Academy of Music and Theatre, an institution sponsored by the state of Bavaria. As a protest action against the stern position of the City of Munich, the leading team of the Academy invited Peter Weisfeld to create an installation with several Stolpersteine in the lobby of the building. City officials could not object to the installation as the building is property of the state. The installation was presented on 31 August 2005. The citizens’ action group presenting the plaques dedicated to Munich victims wanted to bring the project to public attention. They reminded a sentence of artist Gunter Demnig:

""When you read the name of an individual person, calculate his/her age and look at his/her last home, then the horror has a face.""

Part of the installation were also the Stolpersteine for Paula and Siegfried Jordan that had been forcefully removed by city officials from their location in front of the victims last self chosen address. In 2011, city officials found a way to remove the unliked installation in the heart of the city. Although the property belongs to the state, fire protection lays within the responsibility of the city. With this pretext, the installation was removed by the Munich Fire Department.

Collocations on private grounds
On 1 September 2007, the Stolperstein for Heinrich Oestreicher could be collocated by Gunter Demnig in front of the building Viktor-Scheffel-Straße 19 in Munich-Schwabing. The city officials did not have the possibility to remove this stone as it was posed on private grounds. Janne Weinzierl, one of the representatives of the local Stolperstein initiative, stated: "We continue to work steadily in the underground". Wolfgang Brix, the sponsor of this Stolperstein, told the press: "It is about two things: the memory of Heinrich Oestreicher and the importance of respect and regard for one's neighbor." The Methodist Church, that owns that building, stood steadfast behind the collocation.

Step by step, also other house owners decided to join the project: In 2008, four Stolpersteine could be collocated in the same street, one for Judith Ziegler, three for members of the Weiss family. In 2009, two Stolpersteine for the Benarios followed in Haydnstrasse 12 as well as eleven Stolpersteine for victims from several families in Kyreinstraße 3. In May 2014 the first Munich Stolperstein for a victim of Aktion T4 was posed at Von-der-Tann-Straße 7: Max Sax starved to death in Nazi custody in 1943. On 21 December 2013, two Stolpersteine for Jehova's Witnesses Rosa Günther and Viktoria Klimm were posed in front of their last homes in Entenbachstraße and Isartalstraße.

The largest collocation of Stolpersteine for Munich took place on 27 June 2017. On that day, Gunter Demnig posed 21 of them.

Exhibitions
In January 2009, violin maker Zens presented the Stolpersteine for sisters Laura Dobriner and Henriette Drey in his shopwindow in Arcisstraße 57. Within the same year, the Kunstpavillon in the Alter Botanischer Garten (Munich) gave a temporary home to the Stolpersteine for three resistance fighters from Maxvorstadt, dedicated to Hermann Frieb, Walter Klingenbeck and Antonie Pfülf. Since 2015, the Haus der Geschichte presents the Stolpersteine for Paula and Siegfried Jordan in exhibitions in Bonn und Leipzig.

80.000 supporters of collocations
The petition was signed by a wide range of Munich intellectuals such as writers Friedrich Ani, Josef Bierbichler, Amelie Fried, Gert Heidenreich, Herta Müller, Peter Probst and Timur Vermes, directors Doris Dörrie, Martin Kušej and Michael Verhoeven, actors Brigitte Hobmeier, Stefan Hunstein and Franziska Walser, cabaret artist Christoph Süß, musician Siegfried Mauser, as well as by scientists Michael von Cranach, Ludwig Eiber, Willibald Karl and archivist Albert Knoll. He also gained the support of concentration camp survivor Ernst Grube, politician Klaus Hahnzog (SPD) and Jan Mühlstein, the former chair of the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany.

Präsentation der Listen mit den über 80.000 Unter&shy;stützern der Münchner Stolper&shy;steine am Königsplatz, 9. Juni 2015

Nachdem bei den Kommunalwahlen in Bayern 2014 der Münchner Oberbürgermeister Christian Ude, der Knoblochs Standpunkt teilte, altersbedingt aus dem Amt geschieden war, veranstaltete im Dezember 2014 der neugewählte Münchner Stadtrat eine öffentliche Anhörung zu dem Projekt. Diese stand kurz vor einem Eklat, als eine Vertreterin der IKG bei ihrer Kritik an den Stolpersteinen die vereinbarte Redezeit deutlich überzog.

Terry Swartzberg und die „Initiative Stolpersteine für München“ sammelten bis Juni 2015 über 80.000 Unterschriften für ihr Projekt.

Am 28. April 2015 einigten sich die regierenden Stadtratsfraktionen von SPD und CSU dahingehend, dass der NS-Opfer statt mit Stolpersteinen durch Erinnerungswandtafeln und -stelen gedacht werden soll, sofern Angehörige und Hauseigentümer zustimmen.

Am 29. Juli 2015 sprach sich der Münchener Stadtrat mit breiter Mehrheit gegen die Stolpersteine auf öffentlichen Straßen und Plätzen der Stadt aus.

Litigation
Im Auftrag einer Opfergruppe, unter ihnen Peter Jordan, reichte der Münchner Rechtsanwalt Hannes Hartung Ende 2015 Klage ein, unter Berufung auf das Recht auf individuelles Gedenken, das im Grundgesetz verankert ist. Das Gericht wies vor kurzem die Klage als dafür nicht zuständig ab.

Zumal es längst Bodendenkmäler in München gibt, zum Beispiel in Erinnerung an die Widerstandsgruppe Weiße Rose, zum Gedenken an Kurt Eisner, den jüdischen Ministerpräsidenten von Bayern, der 1919 ermordet wurde, oder für den Hitler-Attentäter Georg Elser.

Bodendenkmäler längst Bestandteil der Münchner Erinnerungskultur sind", schreibt Jordan und zählt entsprechende Beispiele aus München auf: das Denkmal für die Weiße Rose vor der Uni, die Metallplatte zum Gedenken an Kurt Eisner, den 1919 ermordeten jüdischen Ministerpräsidenten des Freistaats Bayern, an der Kardinal-Faulhaber-Straße, oder das geplante Denkmal für verfolgte und ermordete Lesben und Schwule am Oberanger. Außerdem, von Jordan nicht erwähnt, erinnert auch an den im Konzentrationslager Dachau ermordeten Hitler-Attentäter Georg Elser ein Bodendenkmal am Gasteig.

An der Klage beteiligen sich laut der Münchner Stolperstein-Initiative neben Jordan derzeit Thomas Nowotny aus Stephanskirchen, Christof Eberstadt aus Erlangen und Steven Bechhofer aus München; weitere Opferfamilien wollen sich anschließen. Die Klage soll am Mittwoch vorgestellt werden. An diesem Tag vor 74 Jahren wurde bei Kaunas in Litauen das jüdische Kunsthändlerehepaar Paula und Siegfried Jordan aus München erschossen.



Am 31. Mai 2016 wies das Verwaltungsgericht München eine Klage auf Verlegung von Stolpersteinen in München ab.

On 27 June 2017, Gunter Demnig collocated 21 more Stolpersteine on private grounds in Munich. On the same day, Terry Swartzberg announced the laying of 60 more in October of the same year.

Cleaning
Immer wieder finden sich Jugendliche zusammen, die aus Eigeninitiative Stolpersteine säubern, polieren oder instand halten.

Bogenhausen

 * Neither collocated nor exhibited:

Sendling

 * Koordinaten übertragen
 * Inschriften ergänzen

Dates of collocations
The Stolpersteine in Munich were collocated by Gunter Demnig on the following days:
 * May 2004: Mauerkircherstraße (2 Stolpersteine)
 * 1 September 2007: Viktor-Scheffel-Straße 19 (1)
 * 12 August 2008: Viktor-Scheffel-Straße 14 and 16 (4)
 * 17 May 2009: Haydnstraße 12 (2), Kyreinstraße 3 (11)
 * 20 November 2011: Kyreinstraße 3 (Eugenie Isaac)
 * 18 April 2013: Lindwurmstraße 205 (2), Liebigstraße/Widenmayerstraße 16 (3)
 * 21 December 2013: Entenbachstraße 45 (1), Isartalstraße 34 (1)
 * 22 May 2014: Von-der-Tann-Straße 7 (Max Sax)
 * 3 July 2016: Liebigstraße/Widenmayerstraße 16 (Ernst Bach)
 * 4 July 2016: Bayerstraße 25 (Helene Simons), Franz-Joseph-Straße 19 (Amalie und Joseph Schuster)
 * 27 June 2017: Ickstattstraße 13 (13), Herzog-Heinrich-Straße 5 (Bloch, Picard, Seligmann) and Römerstraße 7 (Mittereder)