The facts on the ground: why we should be talking about Austria’s Stolpersteine

Abstract

Holocaust commemoration is a diverse cultural practice that comes in the form of ceremonies, textbooks and various kinds of art. There are films, novels, memorials and so-called ‘counter memorials’. Presumably, Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) is the largest project of counter memorials worldwide. These are brass plates inserted into the ground, commemorating individual victims of Nazi violence. The project originated in Germany in the 1990s and quickly spread to numerous other countries. But why should special attention be paid to Austrian stumbling stones? My interest in this question was sparked by the realisation that some Austrian stones differed significantly from their German counterparts. Their designs are different; they are partially based on diverging concepts and the organisations responsible have atypical structures compared to the status quo in other countries. In this article, I first show that activists as well as commentators in Austria are hesitant to identify memorial stones with national concepts. I then examine a curious schism that has occurred between memorial organisations in the Austrian capital of Vienna and the rest of the world. I propose that the tendency to confine memorial work to local contexts is symptomatic of a larger, specifically Austrian, resistance to accepting moral responsibility for the National Socialists’ crimes. Most importantly, I call upon scholars to acknowledge and study the so-far overlooked idiosyncrasies of organisations that install stumbling stones in Austria.