For one of our day trips, we went for a walk in the forest overlooking Forbach.
Most of the few war memorials in Germany are very understated, they usually just mention 'the fallen' in general terms and Holocaust victims more specifically - very politically correct, in other words. But the war memorial at the entrance to the town is pretty unapologetic to say the least. The inscription reads "Den Schützern der Heimat zur Ehr", i.e. "In honour of the defenders of the homeland".
Parked at the petrol station diagonally across the road was a car bearing this splendidly appropriate number plate:
Thursday, 4 August 2011
Forbach Fun
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7 comments:
Such monuments are generally survivors from the interwar period i.e. they commemorate the fallen of the Great War. There is (perhaps surprisingly, in view of the city's more or less unimpeachably liberal credentials) a quite prominent war memorial in Hamburg erected in 1936 (i.e. under the Nazis) with the legend 'Germany must live even if we must die'. It has been 'balanced' by some postwar monuments. Have a look at http://sites-of-memory.de/main/hamburgdammtor.html. Fascinating topic, I think.
H, that's a good point, it's just that the whole thing looked too modern to be WW1, but then again, Germany was a more modern country back then than we were.
But what some describe as "a war memorial from the 1930s" others would describe as "left over Nazi war propaganda" so it comes to the same thing.
Takes a certain mind. :)
Looked at from another perspective, everyone is someone's son or daughter; who'd deny them the chance to have some remembrance?
A couple of years ago I visited this place which is intensely moving, especially when you understand that the German dead were denied upright headstones and had to be buried in pits with tiles, 25 or so names to each, laid flat. And Kathe Kollwitz' sculptures are superb.
Nice part of the world you were in; I was there a few weeks ago on the bike. Gorgeous.
FT, by all means, let's have memorials to all the poor people whom governments sent off to be killed and injured in wars, or sent to gas chambers etc. But that particular memorial clearly glorifies war.
A normal English cenotaph is just a stone pillar bearing plaques with the names of all those from that town or village who were killed, that does the job far better.
What is the soldier on the left carrying?
If they were only armed with giant baseball bats, no wonder they lost both wars.
EG, from all angles, it did indeed look like a giant baseball bat.
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