Güterbahnhof Moabit Memorial, Berlin

Client: Bezirksamt Mitte von Berlin
Cooperation: Jan Liesegang Francesco Apuzzo (raumlaborberlin)
Activity: Project management
Period: 2016-2017
Dimension: 440 m²
Location: Berlin-Moabit

The Güterbahnhof Moabit (freight station) was one of several deportation stations in Berlin during the Nazi era. Between March 1942 and January 1944, 32,000 people were sent from here to the ghettos and concentration camps of Theresienstadt, Riga, Raasiku and Auschwitz. The establishment of a memorial site at the former location of the Moabit freight station was discussed as early as 1987. However, the station was located on Reichsbahn property – and was therefore actuall GDR territory. For this reason, the site could not be designed by the former West Berlin district of Tiergarten. Discussions about the design were revived in 2012. In 2016, the Bezirksamt Mitte von Berlin (district office) initiated an art competition to reveal and appropriately design the historic site between a supermarket and a hardware store car park. This competition was won by the Berlin artist collective raumlaborberlin with their design ‘Hain’.

The design

A grove of 24 pine trees (Pinus sylvestris) is the central idea behind the design. The placement is a seemingly out-of-place and irritating landscape element in a long-neglected, unused location. The intervention creates a unique location. This withdraws from the spatial context and creates a variety of images and associations in the viewer’s imagination. As the vegetation grows, the fourth dimension – the time – can be experienced as part of the historical site. The essential relict of the track fragments from different periods of time is supplemented and forms the core of this place of passage. The Güterbahnhof Moabit memorial thus forms the threshold between Berlin and the death camps. The special quality and appropriateness of the design result from the coherence of an idea. Furthermore, it is the legibility and the abstract reinterpretation of the authentic site, track 69 Moabit.

Our office was commissioned with the project management for the realisation of the award-winning design. In particular, the project management involved coordinating the design with all the specialist administrations involved and assisting with the professional and appropriate awarding of the contract to a landscaping company. We also assisted the artists with the technical realisation of their ideas as well as with construction supervision and site visits.

 

Photos and graphics: raumlaborberlin