From now on, a sculpture will commemorate the victims of Nazi euthanasia on the former grounds of the sanatorium in Haar.
It has now finally found its place.
Haar
- The sculpture "Restlicht" has found its final place on the former site of the sanatorium in Haar.
It is the central memorial for the victims of the euthanasia murder program of the National Socialists.
“Residual light” is a play of light, shadow and projection. At a height of three meters there is a plate with numbers stamped into it. When the sun shines through the holes, “the numbers on the floor look like a tattoo,” says artist Werner Mally. A tattoo on granite slabs from the former quarry of the Flossenbürg concentration camp. The years from 1938 to 1945 symbolize the atrocities of the inhuman Nazi politics.
With the completion of the Art Nouveau park, the sculpture has now moved from the forecourt of the Haar town hall to the meadow between the small theater and the day-care center on Casinostraße in the area of the former Eglfing-Haar sanatorium and nursing home.
Directly opposite the former children's and hunger house, it could not be better, where in the years from 1939 to 1945 under the direction of the psychiatrist Hermann Pfannmüller according to the Nazi ideology, people were selected and murdered as "unworthy of life".
It is a “place that moves me a lot”, says Dr.
Peter Brieger, medical director of the kbo-Isar-Amper clinics.
For him, the sculpture is a further challenge in dealing with the clinic, “how we deal with people today”.
"I had never seen this before"
Mally's inspiration for the sculpture was the number 168514. Tattooed on the arm of his wife's grandfather. “I had never seen this before,” recalls Mally. "Robbed of the name and degraded to a number, the path into inhumanity began for many people." The resulting idea of artistically implementing the numbers tattooed in the arms as a symbol for the "dark time" of the dictatorship resulted in "residual light."
Haars then mayor Helmut Dworzak placed the order, in 2015 the community under Gabriele Müller (SPD) acquired the sculpture, which is an oxymoron for Mayor Andreas Bukowski (CSU): "Treason and murder in a place where life is now full." Embedded between culture, art, kindergarten and apartments, when the “sun at its highest point impresses the horror in the ground.
A reminder that is repeated day after day, ”said Bukowski.
"Now the sculpture has arrived at the right location," emphasized Josef Mederer, President of the District Assembly, who sees politics as an obligation to preserve memories and to set standards for future generations.
"Because we are responsible for what happens in the future."
You can find more news from Haar and the district of Munich here.
