In July last year we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Topography of Terror. Now, on 1 February 2018, we have another event to celebrate: the 25th anniversary of the Memorial Museums Department at the Topography of Terror Foundation.
The Memorial Museums Department has its own special character. A few months after the Topography of Terror Foundation was established, Franz von Hammerstein, the chairman of the board of trustees of Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ARSP), approached us. Von Hammerstein explained that the ARSP had encountered financial difficulties when unifying its branches in East and West Germany, and suggested that we take over responsibility for the Memorial Museums Department, which had already existed for 10 years. This was an interesting idea that we eventually implemented in spring 1993. At the time, Franz von Hammerstein was closely involved with both institutions. He was one of the early supporters of the Topography of Terror project and a member of the expert commission under the chairmanship of Reinhard Rürup that had submitted a plan for a permanent Topography of Terror educational site in 1990. Von Hammerstein was a co-founder the ARSP in 1958 and had served as ist secretary-general for ten years. The advantages of this transfer were obvious: the Memorial Museums Department published a journal that offered the Foundation a proven means of communication. In addition, with an exhibition that was based on a specific historical site, the Topography of Terror was able to perform tasks beyond the local level and carry out work in the field of national memorial culture. Later it expanded this work to the international level as well.
Reinhard Rürup, the former scholarly director of the Foundation, expressed this in Netzwerk der Erinnerung (Network of Remembrance) a booklet published to mark the tenth anniversary of the Memorial Museums Department. In light of the fact that the Topography of Terror was not a memorial centre in the usual sense, but a site of the perpetrators, he wrote, “It may seem surprising at first glance that the foundation is nevertheless the only institution in Germany that has had a nationally active Memorial Museums Department for the past ten years. ... But we barely hesitated with the decision... The work that the Department had done so far had been meaningful and important, and as an institution in the German capital that deals with the history of the Nazis’ reign of terror in its entirety, the Foundation was prepared to take on responsibility for wider areas.”[1]
The Memorial Museums Department began as a one-man operation under Thomas Lutz. Including his time at ARSP, Thomas Lutz has now worked at the department for 35 years, contributing his knowledge, contacts and practical experience. We would like to express our appreciation for his contribution today and our heartfelt gratitude for the continuing success of his work and his great dedication.
Over the years the Memorial Museums Department has been able to expand ist staff and employ Michaela Illner on a part-time basis. In addition, twelve participants from the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service and four young people who elected to spend a voluntary social service year at the Topography of Terror have worked in the Department. They have been primarily responsible for maintaining the online site of the Gedenkstättenforum (Memorial Museums Forum) and the daily selection of press articles. Our special thanks to all of you.
Let me now turn to the main fields of work in which the Memorial Museums Department is active. In describing them, I want to show that the Department is not only an important part of the Foundation, but to some extent pursues its own activities as well.
In the decentralised landscape of memorials in Germany, the Memorial Museums Department serves as a central information and coordination office for memorial centres and places of remembrance. In addition, it is involved in a variety of consultancy activities in Germany and abroad. It offers input on the establishment of new memorial museums and the development of existing ones, and acts in an advisory function for the federal and state governments. It provides consultancy services for new exhibitions in a variety of other countries and for the international projects run by UNESCO, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and the International Holocaust Remembrance Association, in which Thomas Lutz has served as the German delegate for over fifteen years. In addition to the regularly published Gedenkstättenrundbrief, another important communication channel is the above-mentioned online forum with its daily selection of press articles. Finally, the department organises memorial seminars across Germany, as well as international conferences and seminars.
The Memorial Museums Department has made an essential contribution to shaping the national and international reputation of the Topography of Terror Foundation. Its excellent contacts made it possible, for example, to acquire the loan of the glass booth in which Adolf Eichmann was seated during his trial in Jerusalem for display in a special exhibition at the Topography of Terror in 2011. This was the first time the booth was exhibited outside Israel.
Professor Andreas Nachama is the director of the Topography of Terror Foundation.
[1] Netzwerk der Erinnerung: 10 Jahre Gedenkstättenreferat der Stiftung Topographie des Terrors; Eine Veröffentlichung der Stiftung Topographie des Terrors, ed. Reinhard Rürup. Berlin 2003, p. 8.