Germany Memorial on February 13
“He acted unhappy” – Dresden offers right-wing extremists a great opportunity
From: January 26, 2024 | Reading time: 4 minutes
For a week or so, only this discreet inscription on the floor honored the victims of February 13th.
Source: image alliance/dpa/Robert Michael
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Right-wing extremists are again trying to misuse the commemoration of the bombing of Dresden in World War II for their own ends. This time, the city took them a step further, first removing a warning sign without explanation. At least legally the case has already been resolved.
A dispute over the culture of remembrance is once again raging in Dresden. The bone of contention, in the truest sense of the word, is the disappearance of an inscription carved into the Altmarkt. Until the square was redesigned last year, three memorials commemorated the bombing of the city on February 13 and 14, 1945: a stele with an inscription, a slab commemorating the burning of 6,865 dead in this place, and also that inscription on the exit to the underground parking lot.
The engraving on the back of a sandstone bench was removed by a worker on January 9th and 10th – but without prior information to the public. The stele was also missing at this time, as it had been damaged during the renovation of the square in October 2023.
A photo from 2020 shows the engraving on Altmarkt
Source: image alliance/dpa/dpa-ZB/Jens Büttner
This situation provided a clear opportunity for right-wing extremist groups. As the “Sächsische Zeitung” (SZ) reports, both the association “One Percent”, classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, and the small party Free Saxony, classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution , raised feelings against the city administration. The spokesperson for the “New Right”, the magazine “Compact”, described the process as “disgusting” and “insidious” and spoke of a “war for the culture of memory”.
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Only on January 16 did the city present a statement. “The location of the inscription on a bench has been repeatedly criticized for being unworthy because people are sitting in front of the text. There was also repeated damage and graffiti,” a press release said. The removal of the engraving had already been decided in 2019 in consultation with the February 13 working group. This is also why the stele that was damaged during the works was erected in 2020. Mayor Dirk Hilbert (FDP) considered “criticism in this matter justified, as we acted extremely poorly from a communicative point of view”.
The explanation seems understandable: a “dignified” celebration should be in everyone’s interest. But she arrived too late. The Free Saxons had already registered a demonstration for January 21st a long time ago. Title: “Stop the destroyer of monuments Hilbert – for a worthy memory of the victims of the terrorist bombing”. The fact that the city had replaced the faulty stele two days earlier did not change that.
An important sentence is missing
According to “SZ”, around 300 participants attended the call. On the same day, unknown people (according to “Compacto” they were activists of the “Identitarian Movement”) installed a replacement memorial plaque in accordance with their ideas. “This is a place of alert, remembrance and celebration. The bodies of thousands of victims of the air raids of February 13 and 14, 1945 were burned here,” he said. The sentence was omitted: “At that time, the horror of war, taken from Germany to the world, also returned to our city.”
Participants in a counter-demonstration ended up tearing up the letters and throwing them behind a construction fence, as videos of the action show. The sign was collected by the police. They are investigating the sticker on the replacement memorial plaque due to possible property damage.
The Altmarkt, also home to the Dresden Striezelmarkt, was redesigned over the course of a year and a half
Source: image alliance/dpa/Robert Michael
Dresden was badly damaged by British and American bombs on February 13 and 14, 1945. Up to 25,000 people died. In the past, neo-Nazis have repeatedly tried to misuse the commemoration of this night of horror, but since 2012 the peaceful memory of citizens has predominated. Also this year, the city wants to set an “effective example” with a human chain on Remembrance Day.
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Opinion on the bombing of Dresden
From a legal point of view, the question of whether the city acted illegally has at least been clarified. The Dresden Public Prosecutor's Office announced on Friday that it would close the investigation on suspicion of damage to public property and denigrating the memory of the deceased. Several people filed complaints against unknown people after the inscription disappeared.
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However, after investigations, the Public Prosecutor's Office was unable to identify any criminally relevant facts. The removal of the inscription was carried out in consultation with the responsible authorities and the monument protection authority was duly involved. Furthermore, the reformulation of the place of memory “was not associated with any reduction of the deserved right to recognition of the deceased (…) nor was it even remotely intentional”.
Mayor Hilbert sees this as a “special moment of shared remembrance and symbolic coming together for reconciliation and peace.”
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