Dr Angelika Gausmann | Local on-site Group, Berlin/Germany

Profession/Studies/etc.: StR for art and social sciences, doctorate on the artists in the internment and deportation camp Les Milles 1939- 1942.
Institution/Organisation: Friedrich-Spee Comprehensive School Paderborn                       
Personal/professional connection to the topic of history & culture of remembrance :
At school: Project course Museum Suitcase, organisation of study trips to Auschwitz in grade 10.
Academically: Publications on remembrance culture in the Paderborn area, member of the academic advisory board of the Les Milles memorial site.
 

Beds of remembrance

I would make a collection of seeds and spores of the plants growing in places of memory, create bags of mixtures and/or seedbombs from them and distribute them to places worldwide where they would then be sown in beds of remembrance. This method does not interfere with the flora and does not take anything away, as seeds and spores want to spread! The distribution is now actively controlled as the beds are deliberately created and gradually become small gardens that relate directly to the Naliboki forest and the partisans there. These beds are living places of memory created from the living abundance of the Naliboki forests, which will grow larger and larger if they are cared for appropriately. In addition, they create places that are climate-friendly because they store CO2. And with these beds, the memory of the Bielski partisans can be triggered and intensified almost everywhere in the world. It would be nice if these beds could be created in places with political relevance!

Angelika’ reflections about our questions

1. What do you associate with the term "living" memorial?

There really should be life here: Asking questions, generating empathy and offering the freedom to personally approach the fate of people murdered by National Socialists.

2. What other words than "alive" could also describe this kind of memorial place for you?
Promoting empathy, initiating processes, creating impulses, protecting freedom.

3. How would you describe a memorial site that is the opposite of a "living" memorial site? Feel free to invent names.
Wreath-throwing sites!

4. Please think of memorial sites you have visited in the past. Try to describe as concretely as possible which elements of the educational concept contributed to your experience of these places as "living" memorial sites. On the other hand, try to describe which elements in these places have rather hindered/prevented such an experience.

The living memorial place is where I am and work artistically on victims of Nazism. Personally, I don't always want to be tied to specific places.

Obstacles: too much didacticism, setting the learning goal of "being affected", fixed forms: wreaths, candles, minute of remembrance