23 August 2023 at 2 p.m. on Theaterplatz, Weimar

Günther Uecker and Weimar citizens and guests build the "Stone Memorial for Buchenwald" together

In 1999, Günther Uecker, at that time already one of the most important German painters and object artists, erected a stone monument in a cellar room of the so-called prisoners' canteen of the Buchenwald concentration camp. The work was not commissioned by the memorial, but was created on Uecker's own initiative. In 1999, Weimar was European City of Culture. The then Federal Minister of the Interior, Manfred Kanther, who was also responsible for culture, had warned against the "Buchenwaldisation" of the classical city.

Goethe's 250th, Schiller's 240th birthday or the 80th anniversary of the adoption of the Weimar Constitution in that year seemed far more welcome occasions for remembrance than the 60th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland, which also fell in 1999 and with which National Socialist Germany began the Second World War that devastated Europe. This blank space of remembrance burned on Günther Uecker's soul, as it did on the memorial. Born in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in 1930, Uecker, who had experienced the end of the war on the peninsula of Wustrow, still had the images of the war deep in his bones. This is how the work "Ein Steinmal für Buchenwald. 1 September 1939"
In 2023 - twenty-four years later - the installation from back then on Weimar's Theaterplatz will be revived by Günther Uecker. In 1999, it turned against the one-sided, forgetful view of Weimar and Germany, today it also turns against the multiple breaking of the "Never again!" since 1945, against the permanence of imperial wars and oppressive violence, against noncommittal, routine, clichéd remembrance, against the unmistakable revitalisation of right-wing racist attitudes and misanthropy. The memorial does not moralise any more than it is smooth and eye-pleasing.It does not want to create an image of horror.It is an uplifted, silent, sympathetic gesture towards the persecuted and murdered, a composed bewilderment in connection with the hope in man's ability to learn - even if one may doubt it.

The stone memorial will be composed of numerous smaller and medium-sized individual stones. These will be delivered on an open truck on 23 August at around 4 pm.

Afterwards, all citizens and guests of Weimar are invited to assemble the stone monument together under the guidance of the artist!You are cordially invited to join us!

An action of the Weimar Art Festival in cooperation with the Buchenwald Memorial Site.