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Index
Architectural
Centre
Babylon
Cinema
Anatomical
Theatre
The
Deserted Room
Luisenst.
Canal Gardens
Franciscan
Monastery
Künstlerheim
Luise
Lunch
Lecture Guggenh.
Ackerstr. Market Hall
Room
of Silence
Tajikistan
Tearoom
St.
Michael's Church
Nicolai
House
Mori-Ogai Memorial
Honigmond Hotels
Orphtheatre
Berlin
Teahouse
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In 1996 “Der verlassene Raum”
(The Deserted Room), a bronze sculpture by Karl Biedermann was erected in Koppenplatz, - a landscaped square of pleasant
proportions. The sculpture won a competition for a memorial to the Night of the Pogrom on the occasion of its 50th
anniversary, organized by the municipal authorities in East Berlin in
1988. The table, covered in leather and two matching chairs, one of which is knocked
over, are clearly a little larger than ordinary furniture and strikingly
realistic. It is only at close examination or by touching them that one realizes this is a bronze
cast. The crude base-plate is textured like a parquet floor and has a band around it with verses from a collection of poems which were published in 1947 by the Nobel prize winner Nelly Sachs: “...O die Wohnungen des Todes, ( oh the houses of death ) / Einladend hergerichtet ( invitingly
appointed) / Für den Wirt des Hauses, der sonst Gast war- (for the landlord of the house who was once a
guest) / O ihr Finger (Oh you fingers,) / die Eingangsschwelle legend ( laying the
threshold) / Wie ein Messer zwischen Leben und Tod - (like a knife between life and
death) // O ihr Schornsteine, (Oh, you chimney stacks,) / O ihr Finger, (Oh you
fingers, ) / Und Israels Leib im Rauch durch die Luft! ( And the body of Israel going up in smoke! ) Nelly Sachs
(10th
December, 1891 Berlin - 12th May 1970 Stockholm). In the courtyard of the
house at 6, Koppenplatz, there are further traces of the past. A panel
with a saying from the Baal Schem Tow announces "Vergessen ist
Verbannung. (To forget is banishment.) Erinnerung ist Erlösung. (To
remember is salvation.) It is hung on a fire wall which has been designed
as an oversized plain page of an accounts book with the names of the
murdered Jewish owner of the house and her relatives recorded in the form
of a family tree. Among them is the name of a niece who escaped death. She
later sold the house at 6 Koppenplatz to the owners of the "Galerie
sphn" who installed the memorial work. It can be seen when the
gallery is open (Tue-Fri 14.00-19.00, Sat 12.00-17.00). |
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