Düsseldorf’s Mahn- und Gedenkstätte

The Main Square

Back in December I took a bit of a break and went for a long weekend to Düsseldorf to do the Christmas Markets, but what’s a trip without a bit of history? We were a bit limited for choice, but chose to spend the afternoon at the Mahn- und Gedenkstätte in Aldstadt, which was established in the 1980s as a memorial for the victims of National Socialism.

Having looked it up retrospectively, it appears only to have reopened in May this year after a four year closure, with a new permanent exhibition - “Düsseldorf children and young people under the Nazis” and actually, even though I hadn’t know that at the time, the quality of the exhibit was fantastic and you can see that current museum display theory has been fundamental to its new design.

I’d always been a bit curious about how WW2 is remembered in museums in Germany never having visited before, so I’m really glad we chose this museum to visit. It’s steeped in history, both the area in which it’s situated and the building itself, which was once the state police headquarters.

As English speakers we were given audio guides, which we were completely dependent on and were our only real way to access information. They were fantastic bits of kit and well produced. The tier system of information has been used to structure the audio guide clips, each successive clip offering more in depth information, based upon what you’d previously heard. It also offered a ‘?’ option for some points or items if you wanted more information on them specifically.

At first I responded really well to the exhibition and accessing it through the audio guide. However, because I was completely dependent on it, it made it somewhat difficult to maintain that level of concentration. It wasn’t possible to listen to every single clip and I had to try and dip in and dip out of clips that I was particularly interested in.

That said, the exhibit was packed with information, images and photographs, oral history testimony and objects, many of which were shown or displayed in interesting and interactive ways. You could open drawers, slide or spin text panels and listen to testimony through a receiver. And at each step, there was a corresponding number for your audio guide. A huge amount of work has clearly gone into the redevelopment of the exhibit and as a visitor I really appreciated that and could see the huge effort that has gone in to make it modern and accessible.

There were two additional points that I was also particularly taken by. First, was the effort gone to put Düsseldorf in the context of wider history. Local history was told alongside national history and examples of how events we know of at a theoretical level materialised in the communities in Düsseldorf were also included. They wrote themselves and their community into the historical narrative and I thought that was both quite brave and very nicely done. The second point was how the exhibit was told from the perspective of young people, which doesn’t often happen, but also how it covered multiple perspectives - those of Socialists, Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Democrats, Homosexuals and Edelweiss Pirates vs. Hitler Youth. It was really interesting to see all those points of view side by side and talked about quite openly.

The aim for the memorial is that it remains a place of learning, of research and of remembrance (1). They also have a temporary exhibition gallery, which at the moment is ‘Helpers + Healers: Jewish Women in Medicine 1933-1945, and an open access reference library with books, documents, photographs and other archival material which invites visitors to look in more depth at the topics the memorial covers.

I was hugely impressed by this museum and am really glad we took some time to explore the culture of Düsseldorf beyond the Christmas Markets!

(1)    This is the webpage, although it’s in German! -http://www.ns-gedenkstaetten.de/nrw/duesseldorf/besucherinformationen.html