By Maik Ullmann

A collection of donations in Neuhaus at the beginning of the 1950s yielded a total of 1,022 DM. Exactly 49 residents of the altogether about 320 inhabitants -__-0000-__- donated at that time between three and 100 DM, in order to establish a monument to the fallen ones of the Second World War and the missing ones of the village.-__-0001-__- In order to seize evenly those, the responsible persons were dependent on the assistance of the population. So mayor Karl Schaare -__-0002-__- formulated in an undated appeal to the population: "We need -__-0003-__- the exact names, as well as birth-__-0004-__- and death day and where fallen or missed. (also do not forget rank)".-__-0005-__- As a result, a total of 16 letters were received by the municipal council. Consequently in the workshop for grave art in the neighboring Vorsfelde a cushion stone could be given in order, which was set up in the autumn 1953 by the sculptor Martin Voll and the municipality.-__-0006-__- This found its place lying before a erratic block. On it were listed, in addition to the names, the dates of death of the fallen soldiers of the Wehrmacht. Not untypical for the time,-__-0007-__- the setting up took place without any dedication ceremony on the part of the municipality. The memorial thus fits seamlessly into the picture that historian Christoph Cornelißen has drawn for the young Federal Republic culture of remembrance: Among its dominant characteristics were above all "modesty, restraint and silence."-__-0008-__- This was apparently also the case in Neuhaus.

This was not to change in November 1989, when the rebuilt memorial for the fallen and missing of the Second World War was inaugurated on November 19, 1989 on the Neuhäuser Burgallee.-__-0000-__- However, this redesign was not received by the media at any time. This is not surprising, because only a few days before, on November 9, the symbolic starting signal for the German-German reunification had been given with the fall of the wall. Accordingly, the local newspapers reported on the more than ten thousand GDR citizens who took advantage of the new freedom to travel to Wolfsburg on weekends in those days.
The redesign was preceded by a discussion in the local council that began in the late 1980s and addressed the unkempt condition of the monument. Finally, in the summer of 1988, the administration found it necessary to clean the monument and commissioned the company Naturstein Billen KG to do so.-__-0001-__- However, the heating steam cleaning did not achieve the desired result. As a handwritten reference shows, the question was to be discussed anew: "After a cleaning of the existing stones did not show the expected success, the administration will examine the preparation of the monument again."-__-0002-__- The local parliamentary group of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) took the lead in this. Finally the erratic block was supplemented to its right and left side by a red-brown memorial stone from granite, for whose installation a five-digit sum was invested. The memorial inscription proposed by the administration and decided in agreement with the cultural committee is however problematic: "Dem Andenken | Der Opfer | Des 2. Weltkrieges".-__-0003-__- The inscription is followed by the fallen of the village, listed according to the year of death. This results in a dialectic typical for the party-political program of the CDU: Founded as a party for Christian-social and conservatively oriented non-offenders after the end of the Second World War,-__-0004-__- the Neuhausen CDU faction here undertook a posthumous "victim-self-attribution" in the name of the fallen.-.In the context of the Second World War and the history of National Socialism, the concept of victim established in the academic and political discussion, in contrast, only encompasses the group of those who were discriminated against, persecuted and murdered by the Nazi regime.-__-0006-__- Although German - civilian - victims were increasingly included in the discourse in the early 2000s, this was and is less about Wehrmacht soldiers than about displaced persons and victims of the bombing war.

Sources:

-__-0000-__- StadtA WOB, Neu. 4, Quarterly record of population transactions as of April 1, 1951.
-__-0001-__- StadtA WOB, Neu. 22, Memorial for Fallen, List of donations for the construction of the memorial in Neuhaus Township. Undated.
-__-0002-__- StadtA WOB, Neu. 1, Gemeinde Neuhaus an das Kommunalaufsichtsamt Helmstedt. Subject: circular order no. 208/52 of December 7, 1952.
-__-0003-__- StadtA WOB, Neu. 22, The mayor to the municipality of Neuhaus. Undated.
-__-0004-__- StadtA WOB, Neu. 22, Martin Voll to the municipality of Neuhaus, dated October 28, 1953.
-__-0005-__- See the article Maik Ullmann, "Instrumentalisierung der Gedenkkultur. How Right-Wing Conservative Forces Used the Vorsfeld Memorial to Exploit Mourning," in Das Archiv. Zeitung für Wolfsburger Stadtgeschichte, Jg. 2 (May 2017), #005, pp. 10f.
-__-0006-__- Christoph Cornelißen, "Memory Cultures in Stone: National Monuments in Democracies since the American Revolution," in Hans-Joachim Veen/Volkhard Knigge (eds.), Denkmäler demokratischer Umbrüche nach 1945. Cologne/Weimar/Vienna 2014, pp. 37-60, here p. 55.
-__-0007-__- StadtA WOB, HA 10132, vol. 1, note of conversation between Neuhäuser Ortsräte Kowalewski and Flohr and representatives of the city of Wolfsburg, November 2, 1989.
-__-0008-__- StadtA WOB, Neu. 22, Naturstein Billen KG to the structural engineering office of the city of Wolfsburg dated June 29, 1988.
-__-0009-__- StadtA WOB, Neu. 22, Handwritten reference. Undated.
-__-0010-__- StadtA WOB, Neu. 22, Renewal of the memorial in the Neuhaus district, dated July 11, 1989.
-__-0011-__- Petra Hemmelmann, Der Kompass der CDU. Analysis of the basic and election programs from Adenauer to Merkel. Wiesbaden 2017, p. 144.
-__-0012-__- Lars Breuer, Communicative Memory in Germany and Poland. Perpetrator and victim images in conversations about World War II. Wiesbaden 2015, p. 171.
-__-0013-__- Heidrun Kämper, Der Schulddiskurs in der frühen Nachkriegszeit. A contribution to the history of linguistic upheaval after 1945. Berlin 2005, p. 18.


Published 11/7/2018