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Fig. 2

© Archiv Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung

Whilst victims and tourists to the city welcomed the memorial as a powerful symbol, criticism was aimed at the instillation’s style. It was argued that the number of crosses could be seen as a reference to the number of victims, which was not possible to prove. The use of forms was also criticised for mirroring the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which had also only just been opened. Critics claimed that the analogy – 6,000 concrete blocks at the Jewish memorial and over 1,000 crosses at this memorial – would cause an equalisation between National Socialism and the SED dictatorship. Undeterred by the critical voices against the memorial, Alexandra Hildebrandt fought back, as she had done on other occasions, against the dismantling of the memorial, which she had initially claimed would be a temporary one. She organised demonstrations and victims of the communist dictatorship chained themselves to the crosses to protest against their being taken down. They argued that this was the only site in Berlin where the victims of the SED dictatorship were suitably brought into public consciousness. These “guerilla memorials” brought about an end to the inaction in Berlin’s politics. In November 2004, the “Abgeordnetenhaus” (Berlin House of Representatives) submitted two proposals by the CDU and B90/Die Grünen (the Green Party), in which the Berlin Senate was called upon to submit a concept for the preservation of the remaining Wall segments and the remembrance of the SED dictatorship. Both proposals called for the Berlin Senate to be more proactive in their efforts to remember the second dictatorship and its victims in Berlin.