Marina Manoukian on Berlin’s troubling commemoration of the Armenian and Namibian genocide perpetrators…
Nur wer die Vergangenheit kennt hat eine Zukunft.
Only those who know the past have a future
— Willam von Humboldt
In a quiet corner of Neukölln, close to the city’s beloved Tempelhofer Feld, lie two of Berlin’s lesser-known cemeteries. Inside both of these unassuming places of rest, one can find memorials to Germany’s participation and complicity in genocides other that that of the Second World War. Notably, the respective memorials differ quite drastically from those around the city that commemorate the Holocaust.
Known officially as the Columbiadamm Friedhof, the cemetery was created in 1866, and functioned primarily as a burial ground for those lost during various military campaigns. Fallen soldiers from numerous wars—beginning with the 1866 Prussian War, right through to the Second World War—line the various pathways here.
Within the same grounds but separately inaugurated in 1866, lies what is known today as the Türkischer Friedhof. Created as the first Islamic burial ground in Berlin for its Muslim residents, including Ottoman soldiers who died during the First World War while supporting Germany. The striking Şehitlik mosque directly beside it was built between 1999 and 2005.
Depending on which path you take in the Columbiadamm cemetery, you’ll find yourself weaving in and out of a mix of older and newer graves, some with fresh-looking gravestones, others toppled-over or shrouded in ivy. In some instances, the individuality of the graves are replaced with anonymous, identical stones that punctuate the green grass.
Many of the pathways inexorably lead to larger collective memorials that commemorate entire regiments that fell during various military campaigns. It’s hard to miss these sculptural mementos since the graveyard is designed to pull you into their orbit, and although they don’t tower above you, they possess a certain gravitas; a tacit demand for acknowledgement.
The two afore-mentioned memorials, by contrast, stand on the periphery of the Columbiadamm cemetery, and can be easily missed if one doesn’t walk the entire circumference. The Herero stone, the larger of the two, was erected in 1907 during the Herero and Nama genocide committed by the Germans during their colonisation of what is now Namibia.
When the Herero and Nama people staged an uprising against their German oppressors in what are today known as the Herero Wars, the rebellions were violently suppressed and anyone who survived was imprisoned in concentration camps for five years. Known as the first genocide of the twentieth century, it’s estimated that up to 80,000 Herero people and 10,000 Nama died as a result. Many of the horrors of the Holocaust, such as medical experiments, were rehearsed in the various death camps.
The Herero stone commemorates seven fallen soldiers from the Kaiser Franz Guard Grenadier Regiment Number 2 during the Herero Wars (1904-1907). The granite stone itself bears no acknowledgement of the genocide, referring instead to the “Feldzüge in Süd-west afrika” (“Campaign in South-West Africa”) and listing the names of the seven dead men. In 1973, in the midst of the “Hitler wave,” the Afrika-Kameradschaft Berlin added the emblem of Hitler’s Africa campaign to the top of the stone, although the swastika was later exchanged for an iron cross, and the stone was moved to the cemetery from its previous location at the regiment’s former military barracks in Urbanstraße, Kreuzberg.
Given that the stone ostensibly commemorates proponents of an African genocide, there have been repeated protests by multiple groups over the years, including