Heidenau city council bans new Stolpersteine, moves Nazi victim remembrance to cemetery

Commentary by David Muschenich

The city council of Heidenau has relocated the commemoration of Nazi victims to the cemetery, effectively banning further Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) from public streets. Right-wing factions are pushing toward the long-demanded final reckoning with Germany's memorial culture.

A Shift Toward Forgetting

When it comes to German history, right-wing extremists often grow nostalgic—except for one significant chapter they prefer to forget. They dismiss public remembrance of the horrors of the Nazi dictatorship as a "cult of guilt" or a "bird dropping in history."

The Heidenau city council resolution, which mandates that Nazi victims be commemorated only at the cemetery and prohibits new Stolpersteine, avoids explicitly revisionist language. Yet it achieves a similar shift toward a culture of forgetting: removing concrete remembrance of victims from everyday urban life.

Stolpersteine—small brass plaques embedded in the pavement—are typically placed at the last known residences of Nazi victims. They serve as constant, unavoidable reminders of who the Nazis persecuted: neighbors. Jews, Sinti and Roma, political prisoners, homosexuals, transgender individuals, and people with disabilities. Their names are inscribed in brass, visible in daily life, whether passersby wish to see them or not.

The Council's Justification

The motion, supported by members of the AfD and CDU, argued that Stolpersteine do not constitute dignified remembrance because pedestrians thoughtlessly walk over the victims' names. The applicants claimed this distressed relatives and memorial initiatives, presenting a facade of empathy.

However, when representatives of Jewish communities in Saxony, the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime (VVN-BdA), and the International Auschwitz Committee criticized the motion, the council ignored them. The majority of Heidenau city councilors voted to banish remembrance to the cemetery regardless.

The second part of the motion reveals how little the council truly cares about Nazi victims. The proposed memorial site at the cemetery would be dedicated generically to victims of "war, terror, dictators, displacement, and particularly National Socialism in Heidenau"—as if one could draw the same lessons from terrorist attacks as from the Holocaust.

Alternatives Exist

Alternatives to Stolpersteine do exist. In Munich, where Holocaust survivor Charlotte Knobloch criticized pavement-level memorials, the "Erinnerungszeichen" (Memorial Signs) project places similar plaques on steles or building facades. These also bear victims' names, typically at their last residences, integrated into daily life—but at eye level.

Knobloch has explicitly rejected being used to justify the Heidenau decision, calling the motion a "transparent maneuver by extremists."

The Political Reality

The resolution against Stolpersteine originates primarily from AfD members. Their core objective is to draw a line under Germany's memorial culture—and, by extension, to blur the parallels between their own ideology and that of the Nazis. It is all the more alarming that CDU members openly supported the motion.

David Muschenich is a correspondent for taz covering Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. He previously completed a journalism traineeship at taz after studying journalism at Leipzig University and social and economic sciences at the University of Erfurt.