The idea is that you stumble upon them. The figurative meaning of the stumbling blocks, however, became literal in Germany last week, when a City Council vetoed the tribute to victims of Nazism. A motion led by the far-right AfD, but also by the CDU, Prime Minister Friedrich Merz's party, set the country on fire.
While Berlin debated whether or not The Left, winner of the election in the capital, was an anti-Semitic acronym, Heidenau, in the state of Saxony, with 15 thousand inhabitants, decided to debate whether the 10 cm x 10 cm brass plaques with the names of Jews and others persecuted by Adolf Hitler's regime should continue to be installed on the city's pavements.
An initiative that began in the 1990s by a German artist, Gunter Demnig, the "Stolpersteine" are all over Europe. There are already 128 thousand, always placed in front of the last known residence or place of work of victims of Nazism.
They contain basic information: date of birth and date and circumstances of death.
You don't need to know German to identify names in the descriptions that refer to the Holocaust, such as Auschwitz, Birkenau, Dachau and Sobibor. Despite the name, it is not possible to trip over the plates, as they are installed at the same level as the floor. An unsuspecting person could even step on them, one of the reasons given by the municipal project.
According to the play's authors, tributes should be paid in a more appropriate place, such as a city cemetery. "We want to actively address the question of how we can create a place worthy of remembrance in our city and keep alive the memory of the victims of war, terror, dictatorships, expulsion and especially Nazism," said non-party mayor of Heidenau Conny Oertel.
It turns out that this is not the issue. Stumbling blocks were placed on sidewalks in several cities not for lack of decent space, but to draw the attention of those passing by a certain location: someone who was affected by Nazi terror lived or worked there.
Recover, even if briefly, individual stories, bringing them to the present. Hence the idea of stumbling, of coming across something you didn't expect, looking down and noticing someone who, otherwise, would hardly be remembered.
The mayor's argument bypasses the root of the controversy, which is precisely the memory that Germany has forced itself to cultivate since the end of the Second World War. A state policy that the AfD promises to end if it comes to power.
The so-called culture of memory seeks to preserve the country's history before, during and after the conflict, notably the crimes and institutional damage of the Nazi era.
For the far-right acronym, a burden that the current generation of Germans should not bear. "More Bismarck, less Hitler," declared Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, AfD ideologue in Saxony-Anhalt, a state that last month brought the party very close to its first state government — something unprecedented for the far right in post-war Germany.
Privileging Otto von Bismarck's 19th century in school curricula is part of the party's government program. A reactionary measure, like the one that defends German architecture to the detriment of the "impersonal and communist" modernism of the Bauhaus, another item of the reform.
The Heidenau City Council denied that its project is ideological in nature. The arguments were overwhelmed by repercussions across the country. "A scandal", according to Christoph Heubner, of the International Auschwitz Committee. "A horror," said Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria.
"It is regrettable that the CDU is participating in this", declared Demnig, the creator of the "Stolpersteine", highlighting another layer of the controversy, a publicized rapprochement between the prime minister's conservative party and the extreme right. The Christian Democrats are sinking in the polls along with Merz's popularity, unable so far to rival the easy solutions of the AfD's populism.
The CDU's first reaction in Berlin was to push the problem back to the local representation in Heidenau. Soon, however, the size of the controversy made the party condemn the episode, reiterating that the culture of memory "is a non-negotiable pillar of the German State".
Paying tribute to the victims of Nazism is part of this culture. In May, the country's president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, knelt on the sidewalk of a street in Dorsten, northwest Germany, to clear a stumbling block. This is a common exercise in Germany, as is leaving flowers and candles around the signs.
Heidenau has five of them, and a local association had requested authorization to install 12 more. "We never imagined that the request would be rejected. The intention is to marginalize the memory", Anne Nitschke, responsible for the request, told the newspaper Die Zeit.
Politicians from different parties asked the city council to review the project.
"Whether Berlin is becoming more like the Weimar Republic is a question that still needs to be answered," declared Steinmeier, this Saturday (3), during the celebration of National Reunification Day.
