remembering - Krems macht Geschichte

Introduction

KremsMachtGeschichte invites you to learn about and engage with the history of National Socialism in Krems. As you move through the city you connect various historical sites with each other. A simple stroll creates a personal narrative that brings the places, themes and histories into the present and enables you to keep the past alive in your critical memory.

What does it mean to “make history”? In 1938 Krems became the capital of the Gau, or Nazi administrative district, of “Lower Danube”. This was a time when Krems was making history, but history of a kind many would like to forget today. Today, when we remember, when we name perpetrators and tell the stories of victims, when we make resistance visible and point out continuities, we’re participating in the writing of history in our society. History isn’t just written in schoolbooks and by historians and at universities; it’s continually being produced by our everyday actions. History happens in the here and now.

24 historical sites, marked by green pennants, form the stations of the KremsMachtGeschichte tours. Every site stands for a different event that has something to tell us about destruction, persecution and crime, as well as about responsibility, solidarity and resistance. Some roads lead to memorials that glorify the past and that today need some historical correction. Prominent positions in the cityscape are taken up by the court and the prison, places where Nazi violence was once inflicted but that today contribute to the functioning of democracy. Many sites of past events are unrecognisable as such today; only through your imagination can they come back to life.

The information about each place can be called up with any smartphone by using the QR codes on the pennants. Texts and images can also be found in the catalogue which is displayed at various places in the city. By taking a walk through the city, you’re already making some history. En route from site to site, the historical picture gradually becomes more intricate. Common themes emerge, each of which groups the sites in a new way and connects them with our contemporary world. The themes include “on Jewish life”, “on resistance”, “on persecution and punishment” and “on remembering”. The short texts under these titles give some initial ideas that you can question and add your own stories to on the empty pages of the catalogue.

Every historical site is contested. Where some people seek comfort in their “heroes”, others see warmongers and murderers. Monuments like the one to General Karl Eibl celebrate a glorious military past, making it possible to forget the crimes that the Wehrmacht committed, especially in the Soviet Union. The monument to the sappers of the First World War has repeatedly been a gathering place for right-wing and far-right groups.

Remembering and memorialising involve conflicts about history and about our image of ourselves. This became obvious after the Second World War, when the Soviet occupation authorities ordered that the bodies of the Red Army soldiers who had died in the prisoner of war camp STALAG XVII B be reburied in the heart of the city of Krems. By turning the central square of the city into a cemetery, they wanted to create a daily reminder for the citizens of their complicity in these crimes. The monuments to the Greek and Polish victims of the massacre in the Stein prison in April 1945 are further memorial sites that urge the citizens of Krems to take responsibility for their own history. And this is needed, because memory fades away. The poetic forces at work in history in the city of Krems are emphasised by contemporary artists and their works. For example, the 105 carpet pictures that Iris Andraschek painted on the pavement in front of the former homes of expelled Jewish women show the ways in which remembering and forgetting interact with each other. The artist used lime-based paint for this. The footsteps of passers-by and the rain will make these images slowly fade away, just as we would forget without constant prompts to critically remember.

Since the 1980s it has mainly been private initiatives that have kept the engagement with the history of Nazism in Krems alive. Since 2019 the Historians’ Advisory Council has been making its proposals to the local council, which has launched a series of initiatives for critically engaging with history. There are interventions into historical images: for example, an explanatory board next to the Karl Eibl monument that points out precisely the historical contexts that the monument itself tries to make people forget. Naming is also an important area of critical history work. A park in the historical quarter of Stein is now called the Hedwig Stocker Park, thus keeping the name of a principled prison warder in the public memory. And the removal of the Nazi poet Maria Grengg from the name of a street and her replacement with the educationalist Margarete Schörl signals a critical engagement with our own history. This process too can involve a wide range of conflicting interests, as shown in the name of Franz-Zeller-Platz. When the new museum was opened here, some wanted it to stand in a “Museum Square” (Museumsplatz). The original street sign that bears the name of a Communist resistance fighter remains over only a small patch of grass.