Stolperstein is the German word for “stumbling block”, “obstacle”, or “something in the way”. (The plural form of the word is Stolpersteine.) The artist Gunter Demnig has given this word a new meaning, that of a small, cobblestone-sized memorial for a single victim of Nazism. These memorials commemorate individuals – both those who died and survivors – who were consigned by the Nazis to prisons, euthanasia facilities, sterilization clinics, concentration camps, and extermination camps, as well as those who responded to persecution by emigrating or committing suicide.
While the vast majority of stolpersteine commemorate Jewish victims of the Holocaust, others have been placed for Sinti and Romani people (also called gypsies), homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Black people, Christians (both Protestants and Catholics) opposed to the Nazis, members of the Communist Party and the Resistance, military deserters, and the physically and mentally disabled.
The list of places that have stolpersteine now extends to several countries and hundreds of cities and towns.
Schools, relatives, and various organizations research facts about people who were deported or persecuted during the Nazi regime. The database of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem provides more information.
Once the research is done, Demnig manufactures a concrete cube of 10 cm (4 inches), which he covers with a sheet of brass. Then he stamps the details of the individual; the name, year of birth and the fate, as well as the dates of deportation and death, if known. The words “Hier wohnte” (“here lived”) grace most of the memorials, though others are installed at the individual’s place of employment and refer instead to the work. The stolperstein is then laid flush with the pavement or sidewalk in front of the last residence of the victim.
The cost of the stolpersteine is covered by donations, collections, individual citizens, contemporary witnesses, school classes, or communities.
After Demnig had the idea in 1993, the first exhibition took place in 1994 in Cologne. The then priest of the Antoniter church encouraged the project. In 1995, Demnig began to install stolpersteine on trial, without a permit, in Cologne; then in the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin. In 1996, he set out 55 stolpersteine in Berlin within the scope of the project “Artists Research Auschwitz”. In 1997, he mounted the first two stolpersteine for the Jehovah’s Witnesses Matthias and Johann Nobis in St. Georgen, Austria on the suggestion of Andreas Maislinger, founder of Arts Initiative KNIE and the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service. Four years later, he received permission to install 600 more stolpersteine in Cologne.
