Devising any monument for a public place demands more than just talent. It requires keen intelligence and a clear perception of the countless pitfalls that await the less perceptive. But the risks are obviously compounded when the artist is asked to produce a "Monument against Fascism, War and Violence and for Peace and Human Rights" - a title one is tempted to hyphenate throughout and that seems to invite all the worst clichés. Yet this was the subject the city fathers of Hamburg proposed to 46-year-old German artist, Jochen Gerz, who was not only not a sculptor but had had no prior experience in that area.
The city fathers showed unusual daring in their choice, and as it turned out, they were well rewarded for it. Gerz, a poet and artist who usually displays his texts and photographs together, devised the monument with the help of his wife, Esther Shalev-Gerz, a sculptor whom he met and married in Jerusalem in 1984 - the year he received the commission.
The Gerzes were well aware of the unusual difficulties of the task. To begin with, how does one produce a "monument against" anything? And, supposing this first question finds an acceptable answer, how does one then avoid producing the sort of demagogical or authoritarian statement that is one of the more reprehensible traits of the evil being condemned?
The commissioned monument was obviously meant to express the resolve that might be phrased thus: "We must never again accept the ideas nor allow ourselves to be led into the sort of conduct that Fascism imposed on Germany." But whose resolve was this supposed to be? The city fathers'? The artists'? Or the population of Hamburg's? And if it were the latter, had the population ever been consulted about the matter?
The concept the Gerzes came up with offered a brilliant solution to all these problems. The monument, inaugurated in October 1986 in Harburg, a district of Hamburg, is a hollow aluminum pillar, one meter square and twelve meters high. The pillar is covered with a layer of lead, metal styluses are attached to the base of the column, and a temporary inscription gives the necessary information: "We invite the citizens of Harburg and visitors to the town to add their name here to ours. In doing so we commit ourselves to remain vigilant. As more and more names cover this twelve meter tall lead column it will gradually be lowered into the ground."
"One day," the text concludes, "the column will have disappeared completely and the site of the Harburg Monument against Fascism will be empty. Ultimately, it is only we ourselves who can rise up against injustice." The text is written in German, French, English, Turkish, Arabic, and Hebrew. About 60,000 signatures are expected. Once the entire monument has disappeared it will be covered with a flagstone bearing an inscription stating what lies beneath it.
Nothing much happened during the first few days after the inauguration. Then the swastikas began to appear. "A swastika," says Gerz, "is also a signature." But the most painful aspect of public reaction, in the artists' view, is the fact that some people come at night to scratch out the names signed during the day. The monument has also been multilated by persons attempting to remove the lead plating with a hammer and
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