We would like to take this opportunity to draw attention to the numerous interventions surrounding the memorial creation process. Art interventions & protest actions.

»500 SHIPS 735 TRAINS 1942-1944 MORE THAN JUST SERVICE PROVIDERS… — AGAINST FORGETTING!«

Self-generated risk of collapse

Nine windows lean against the museum walls. Large orange-red letters are painted on the panes of the white plastic windows. What appears to be a minimalist gesture is in fact a transfer of archive material from the immediate vicinity of the Weserburg to the institutional art context. These are nine of ninety windows on the façade of the headquarters of the logistics company Kühne + Nagel. The letters are fragments of a statement that unknown persons affixed to the façade in February 2017, during demolition work in favor of a larger new building, in memory of the shipping company’s own concealed role during the Nazi era. They form the undestroyed inventory of the painted windows. The message on the façade will never be legible again, but the empty spaces within the installation Patches of Protest (0C7354HGE) refer to the missing window elements. Rhythmized by spaces of different sizes, the serial principle here is not based on the repetition and mirroring of physical forms, as in Donald Judd’s Untitled from 1968, for example, but the serial narration of the empty spaces is explained by the logic of the work itself, which goes back to a history marked by omissions.
As standardized one-offs, the windows that served as the painting ground are symbolic stagings of the ground of the painting itself: Developed in 1954, the plastic window was installed millions of times in the course of the so-called German economic miracle - including in Kühne + Nagel’s headquarters, completed in 1961. The plastic window is the epitome of an economically prosperous Federal Republic, which - built on the rubble of war - wants to forget its personal ties with the fascist apparatus and yet operates in continuity. The architect of the building, Caesar Pinnau, was no unknown quantity. During the Third Reich, he had belonged to Albert Speer’s circle and was commissioned to design the interior of the New Reich Chancellery in 1938, for example.

Kühne + Nagel itself, in addition to executing contracts in all occupied territories, was the main player in the so-called M-Aktion, which was referred to by the inscription on the windows with the words »500 SHIPS 735 TRAINS 1942-1944 MORE THAN JUST SERVICES… —— AGAINST FORGETTING!« reference was made. Furniture, everyday objects and works of art belonging to the deported, mostly Jewish population from France and the Benelux countries were looted from their homes and transported to Germany for resale. The company not only profited from this in terms of profits, but also gained logistical expertise that continued to contribute to the company’s prosperity after the war. The »banality of evil« does not manifest itself in one cruel act, but in the addition of bureaucratic processes and an apparatus in which the individual cedes his conscience to the prevailing opinion.
Another part of the Patches of Protest group of works refers with its title (WK20170204S9print.pdf) to the file name of the corresponding press article, which is freely accessible in the online archive of the Federal Association of Victims of Nazi Military Justice. This provides information that the painting was censored the day after it was put up by tearing the windows out of the building after a short-term closure: »The closure became necessary because a wall threatened to collapse during the demolition of the Kühne + Nagel building on Martinistraße.« The closure was justified with a danger that could only occur during the demolition work.
It is a radical appropriation of both the windows and the press article, which the artist as archivist smuggles into the art context. What should have fallen victim to excavator censorship now becomes a permanent artifact that raises questions of historiography and authorship.

Mona Schieren