English translation of the paper:
Nazi culture of remembrance: Archaeological finds gain in importance
There are fewer and fewer contemporary witnesses alive who can still report directly on the horrors of the Nazi dictatorship. In the future, finds from archaeological excavations are therefore likely to become more important. Objects discovered at former concentration camp sites, for example, are intended to help us better understand the everyday lives and realities of victims and perpetrators. On Wednesday, archaeologists from Austria and Bavaria signed a joint position paper on this.
"Objects can tell us at least as much as written sources, photographs or film recordings," emphasised Sven Keller, head of the Obersalzberg documentation centre in the former "Führer restricted area" near Berchtesgaden in Bavaria. "This also makes finds important for educational and communication work. The key here is to put the material evidence into context and let it tell its story."
Everyday objects tell their own story
As an example, Keller cites a matchbox made by Solo, which has a label with the words "One people, one empire, one leader" on it. "At first glance, this is a piece of propaganda material" - produced countless times. But the manufacturer of the matches was Jewish, who was forced to label his product accordingly when Austria was annexed. In 1938, the entrepreneur fled to the Czech Republic and later to France, where he was imprisoned in a concentration camp for a while and died shortly after his release in 1942. "The matchbox, whose history we know, is therefore a much more important object than Hitler's cake fork, which can be auctioned off on the Internet."
Other everyday objects also make the picture of history appear more vivid and multifaceted. Claudia Theune, archaeologist and professor at the University of Vienna, has accompanied several excavations at former Nazi sites. "In addition to other sources, objects have great potential to make structures of power and terror of the Nazi era clear," she says. Toothbrushes and combs, for example, testify to the efforts of concentration camp inmates to maintain a minimum standard of hygiene. Finds with engraved names or initials show that they did not just see themselves as a number. Or homemade shoes show an attempt to protect themselves from bad weather. "All of these are testimonies to survival strategies, to how people dealt with the conditions in the camps," explains Theune.
In their work, archaeologists are initially struggling with the sheer number of finds. In the German Reich and in the occupied territories, there were two dozen concentration camps with around 1,200 subcamps, as well as six euthanasia centers. In addition, there are - like the Obersalzberg - pure perpetrator sites. Many of the finds are mass finds, where hundreds of objects are unearthed at once. "In the Hartheim Castle killing center in Upper Austria alone, 8,000 finds were made," says Theune: rosaries, a pocket mirror, cream jars, an exclusive lipstick or a prosthetic leg. A children's cup reminds us that more than 800 children and young people were murdered in Hartheim, and a box for expensive razor blades tells the story of the entrepreneur, gunsmith and "Reich master blacksmith" Paul Müller.
How to deal with mass finds?
"At the beginning, the question was: do we have to keep everything? Can we sort things out and throw some things away - and if so, under what conditions," says Theune. But it is not just the quantity of finds that is a challenge: Often we are dealing with huge areas, such as former concentration camps or barracks. Many of the objects found are industrially manufactured, often items produced by forced labor. Their state of preservation is not always good, and the question arises as to whether and how things should be restored or kept. "Long-term and sustainable storage is becoming a challenge in view of overcrowded depots and collections."
For this reason, principles were developed jointly with the Federal Monuments Office in Vienna and the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation in Munich on how to deal with finds and mass finds from the Nazi era. The joint paper formulates general guidelines. One of the findings is that the complete recording and comprehensive documentation of all finds is central. "No objects belonging to victims are excluded, nothing that was hand-made, nothing that was modified," says Theune. And as Susanne Fischer from the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation emphasized, it is of great importance to pass on the results of the work to posterity, i.e. to publish, exhibit and communicate them.
For the head of the Obersalzberg documentation, the excavations have another advantage: he welcomes the archaeological support because it also prevents something like illegal excavations. Time and again, objects are offered for sale on the Internet that suggest a connection to the Obersalzberg. "Many of them date from the immediate post-war period, souvenirs that were taken by occupying soldiers. But right up to the present day, things keep turning up at auctions that claim to come from the Obersalzberg. People try to make money from the most absurd things."
Comments