Lore-Breslau

Lore Breslau commemorative plaque at Georg-Büchner-Schule
Frankfurt am Main
2001

Initial situation

In 2001 Bernd Fischer was asked by the Georg Büchner School in Frankfurt to come up with an idea for a commemorative plaque. This was to provide visible testimony to the work undertaken at the school, and constitute a reminder to future generations. Over several years working groups studied crimes against humanity under the nazi regime. In this context pupils also researched traces of the life of Lore Breslau, a former pupil at the Bismarck School, predecessor of the Georg Büchner School.

Assignment

The schools supplied two texts and the place the plaque was to be hung in the school building as guidelines. The plaque was not to be dominant yet noticeably integrated into the school envirnoment. The text guidelines:

The text guidelines

Lore Breslau
geboren am 9. September 1923
in Frankfurt am Main
bis 26. März 1936
Schülerin der Bismarck-Schule
am 19. Oktober 1941
deportiert nach Lodz/Ghetto Litzmannstadt
hier verliert sich ihre Spur

Identität
Menschen haben mir
mein Ich verboten
Sie wissen nicht
dass ich auch
Baum bin Vogel Stern
und Architekt
der Märchen baut
die sie nicht sehen
obwohl sie
bis in den Himmel
reichen
Rose Ausländer

Artistic solution

In accordance with Bernd Fischer’s concept the texts supplied by two independent witnesses with two different perspectives were part of one “horizon of events”. For this reason Fischer decided to devote a separate plaque to each text. Both plaques are made of aluminum laminate. One plaque has an upper layer in black and a lighter-colored layer below. In the other plaque the layers are reversed. When engraving the text light letters emerge from a black background and conversely, dark letters from a pale background. Bernd Fischer considers this an analogy for the various perspectives of the texts: The personal data of a murdered person, a victim of the criminal regime are, through the work of the pupils, extracted from the darkness of forgetting and brought into the light of the present; they are thus represented in light letters in black surroundings. The poetic expression of the dark experiences of a survivor are represented in black letters from the lower layer which are visibly exposed in the light field.

The design was realized without any changes.
(E.S.)

Execution

engraved Gravoxal and Gravostral
plaque Breslau 13 x 154 cm
plaque identity 10 x 122 cm

 

» Teatching at Georg-Büchner-Schule
» Ursula König about the work…