Gunter Demnig is on the way.
The highway rushes in the background on the phone.
"Can you do it half an hour later?" Asks the 73-year-old.
He was just in Bensheim, laying stumbling blocks on Darmstädter Strasse.
Before that, he went to Serbia and set 22 stones, "the first in the country," says Demnig.
The Cologne sculptor has been laying Stolpersteine for around 25 years. With this, Demnig wants to remember Nazi victims: "People who were persecuted, murdered, deported, expelled or driven to suicide during the Nazi era" can be read on the website of his foundation.
But when it comes to the biographies of individual people, things can get tricky.
An order from Luxembourg caused a stir these days.
Because in the community of Junglinster 15 stumbling blocks were to be sunk in the ground: four for Jews - and eleven for forced recruits.
This refers to Luxembourgers who were forcibly drafted during National Socialism and who sometimes fought in the Wehrmacht.
All eleven soldiers died in the war, other conscripts survived.
In the 1980s the Federal Republic paid compensation as a token of recognition.
For Demnig it is therefore clear: "The eleven were victims of National Socialism, for me there is no difference."
"Mixture of Different Sufferings"
Is there really no difference?
Critics spoke of »egalitarianism«: As a representative of the Jewish community, she felt »alienation«, said Claude Wolf, President of the »Comité pour la mémoire de la Deuxiéme Guerre Mondiale«, the Luxembourg portal reporter.lu.
She worries about the "mixing of different suffering".
Jens-Christian Wagner, foundation director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora memorials, also rejects stumbling blocks for forced recruits: "Wehrmacht fighters and people who were murdered in gas chambers are on the same level here in terms of design," he told SPIEGEL.
"That has been forgotten about history."
Sculptor Demnig: He usually lays the stones himself - there are now more than 80,000
Photo: Eduard Bopp / IMAGO
Demnig is familiar with these discussions: The definition of Nazi victims is controversial. The municipalities decide who gets a stumbling block in public space and who doesn't. They judge differently severely. Demnig was in a dispute with the city of Hanover when he tried to lay a stumbling block for Walter Sochaczewski ten years ago. Because the Jewish pediatrician had emigrated in 1936, Hanover initially refused: the doctor had survived the Holocaust, stumbling blocks were reserved for the fatalities. After protests, the city finally gave in.
Augsburg rejected eight applications for stumbling blocks in 2017 for similar reasons.
Among them were Nazi opponents like Maria Pröll, who was killed in air strikes.
Others died from illness.
Stumbling blocks should only be laid as memorials for "the victims murdered by the National Socialists and driven to their death," was the reason given by the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Stumbling blocks are not allowed everywhere
In Munich, Demnig is generally only allowed to lay stumbling blocks on private land; the city council banned them on public land.
For the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde München und Oberbayern, President Charlotte Knobloch had criticized that passers-by would step on the stones and "carelessly walk over them."
To date, only steles or memorial plaques are allowed in public spaces.
In cities like Hamburg, says Demnig, it is easier for him and the term victim is less narrow.
Among the more than 6000 stumbling blocks there are now less clear cases such as emigrants and those involved in the war.
Otto Röser, for example, was arrested in 1935 for "preparing to commit high treason," according to the court rationale at the time.
Later Röser fought in the "parole 999";
it was formed from "unworthy of defense" prisoners who otherwise faced deportation to a concentration camp.
Enlarge image
Jens-Christian Wagner: "I struggle with the victim-centrism of our culture of remembrance"
Photo: Martin Schutt / dpa
Probably, according to the database of the »Stolpersteine Hamburg«, he died while the battalion was deployed.
Is Röser a victim or a perpetrator?
"Nazi victims and perpetrators are often difficult to define," says Jens-Christian Wagner.
"It is a gray area that cannot be represented with stumbling blocks." But who decides whether a person deserves the designation "victim"?
So far there is no uniform procedure in Germany, no common criteria for applying for stumbling blocks.
"I'm not a do-gooder"
The project is financed through sponsorships.
A stone costs 120 euros, abroad twelve euros more.
Mostly, explains Demnig, residents or descendants of Nazi victims come up to him.
Local initiatives often take care of enforcing the applications with the municipality.
“Stumbling blocks work as a pyramid scheme, that's what makes them so charming,” says Wagner.
"The problem would not be solved with a central committee." However, local initiatives would have to "enter into more discursive exchange."
Whether a stumbling block is appropriate can only be decided from a "scientific perspective".
Gunter Demnig is not a scientist.
He sees himself neither as an activist nor as a do-gooder - "I'm a sculptor".
Demnig does not say a lot about his family.
His father worked "for the flak", he says, "they shot in the air and often didn't know where to go themselves."
He heard most of the "back then" stories from his grandmother.
"A red, SPD woman from the very beginning," says Demnig.
She lived near Nauen in Brandenburg, not far from Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
"There she was watching the transports," saw soldiers driving prisoners with rifles in front of them.
Of course, it was clear "that what was going on was not clean," says Demnig.
Brick on brick, 500 a month
Demnig set his first stone on December 16, 1992 in Cologne.
He engraved a 1942 deportation order from SS mass murderer Heinrich Himmler into a brass plate. "At the time, I didn't think it would turn into a project like this," he says.
"For me it was conceptual art." Then everything turned out differently: Karlheinz Schmid, editor of the "Kunstzeitung", published an illustrated book with the title "Art Projects for Europe" - subtitle: "Megalomania".
Demnig's first stone was also depicted in it.
The sculptor felt challenged: "I might not be able to create a million stones, I thought at the time," Demnig explains.
"But I could at least start." To date, 80,000 stumbling blocks have been laid in 27 countries.
He manages around 500 stones a month, the goal is 750.
When he heard about the discussions about the stumbling blocks in Luxembourg, "it made me incredibly sad," says Demnig.
"One group of victims is played off against the other here."
Forced recruits were part of the Wehrmacht.
"But do you have any evidence that they were really murderers?"
Are there first and second class victims of National Socialism?
Wagner, on the other hand, calls for no stumbling blocks to be set in disputed cases.
Even if people were drafted against their will or were not actively involved in the crime, it was a gray area: "Forced recruits were also the pillars of Nazi exclusion."
Around ten years ago there was a dispute about a stumbling block for Hugo Dornhofer: Before 1945, the later CDU politician was a compulsory construction manager in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp.
The stone was approved, Demnig laid it in Heiligenstadt in Thuringia, labeled "Forced Laborers".
Wagner protested against it.
"With a label like that, everyone had to think that they were a normal concentration camp prisoner," he says.
Although Dornhofer had been obliged to serve, at the time unemployed, "certainly not an ardent Nazi".
"But a site manager had a normal employment relationship with a completely normal wage," says Wagner.
Finally he persuaded Demnig to remove the stone again, "one day it was simply no longer there."
"Concept of victim watered down"
"I struggle with the victim-centrism of our culture of remembrance," says Wagner.
"The victim has a high level of social prestige, which is why many try to slip under the term victim."
"People are not lambs, but acting actors," says Wagner.
Under the concept of sacrifice they would be "objectified".
Wagner advocates dealing more with the beneficiaries of National Socialism in the culture of remembrance.
It is a "duty of society to deal with contentious cases," he says.
»But this requires educational projects and public discussions.
And no stumbling blocks. "
Demnig has the impression that the concept of victim has been expanded in recent years.
In the past, he received fewer orders for the disabled, "now more and more relatives come to me."
In some cities, the criteria for stumbling blocks have relaxed.
He now goes to Hanover several times a year - "let's see what else happens in Munich."