The initiator of the Holocaust memorial is one of the sharpest Critics of the arts project DAU in Berlin. It is against the construction of part of the wall. In a DW Interview, she explained her reasons.
DW: Mrs Rosh, the initiator of the art project, the DAU wanted to build a 3,60 Meter high concrete wall around the Area between unter den Linden and French street. A wall in the middle of Berlin – this is for you to imagine?
Lea Rosh: for us, This was just not conceivable. Here are tons of should be heavy wall parts. A publicly accessible area would have been blocked for a week for the private and commercial project. Because someone has allocated 6.6 million Euro. I can imagine that for many in the city, also for the head of the Festspiele (Berlin festival are the organizers of the art project, DAU, Anm.d.R.) very tempting. We were here, the wall is really long enough. With all the bad experiences you had people that lived behind the wall. A wall, that is not what we wanted!
Behind this new wall of a fictional totalitarian System. That sounds like a kind of disney Park-DDR. The making fun of the dead of the East German regime?
Idea of wall and art project “DAU of freedom” recently, in Berlin
I think you will be ridiculed. Me called people who said: ‘We have been sitting in hohenschönhausen.’ For example, a young man who says he is not going to fight his depression, which he, and indeed every day. Of is in treatment for many years. A woman was in Hohenegg. You can look at these places in Hohenegg and in the Amount schönhausen. Because you can show and convey what it means to live in the jail. To do this, we need the wall again erzurichten.
History through art action, sensual experience, is covered by the freedom of art?
A lot can be done. But the real prisons exist still. The you can visit. Since we don’t need artificial prison.
It is an artistic provocation, which goes into the Void, because it trivialised the crimes of communism?
Yes. And the victims say this. I could read what people wrote. Of those who have experienced the crime firsthand, there is a total rejection.
An art action, Ms. Rosh is that even the right action, to remind us of the totalitarianism? It would need instead not more of a memorial?
Memorials we have – Hohenegg and Hohenschönhausen!
An art project is more of a test arrangement, while a memorial is the attempt to create a timeless and society to find commonly accepted Form for the Recall?
The wall is not a event toys. So I stick to it. The Concern is Yes, DAU to be in Paris and London built. Anything you want to build there, but without a wall! It seems to go without a wall. Why do we need to build then in Berlin, where the wall is associated with painful memories, a wall?
You know from sorry experience that, even memorials can be controversial. You only have to think of their long struggle for the Berlin Holocaust memorial….
Lea Rosh (right) at the opening of the Holocaust memorial in 2005
Well, but two-thirds of the deputies in the German Bundestag have voted after a five-hour debate. I know how controversial this is. But the sites of the Holocaust, the six destruction of stations, all of which are in Poland. The are not here. That is why we have built in Berlin, the Holocaust memorial, this sculpture of stelae and the small Museum. But DDR, we still have here…
The state Minister for Culture Monika Grütters has been shown to be disappointed about the cancellation. You are relieved?
A wall is not a statement of the meaning of prison and totalitarianism. Therefore, we do not want a new wall.
The journalist and publicist Lea Rosh (Born 1936) was one of the historians Eberhard Jäckel of the initiators of the Berlin memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe. The memorial, designed by Peter Eisenman, stelae consists of 2711 rectangular concrete-and was on 10. May 2005 inaugurated.
With Lea Rosh Stefan Dege language.