Pros And Cons Of The Stolopersteine

It is necessary to understand the background and the motives for the Stolpersteine to further assess various perspectives and attitudes towards this tremendously large monument. It has provoked diverse reactions through the highly sensitive and emotional topic of the atrocities happened in the German history. To analyse the different opinions, we will look at multiple German newspaper articles to gain insights about the feelings of the parties concerned. Hence, the reactions presented in newspaper articles are categorized regarding to the different parties affected of the memorial, such as the public, the sponsors, the single cities, and the Jewish communities.
Reactions of the public To determine the general atmosphere regarding Gunter Demnig’s artwork, we took German newspaper articles from the individual cities as representative for the local opinion. As a matter of course, we need to notice that we generalize here to a certain extent and cannot conclude that each individual advances this view. As each controversy consists of pros and cons, the public has also highly varying perception of the memorial which will be presented in the following. At first sight, the Stolpersteine are perceived very positively through their visualisation of individual destinies across whole cities

The possibility of an active involvement of the public in researching, sponsoring, cleaning, and caring for the Stolpersteine is another reason for the great success of Demnig’s project (Nefzger, 2014). Not only the homeowners feel responsible for the conservation of the Stolpersteine in front of their doors (Fried, 2015). Even school classes participate regularly in the maintenance of the memorial such as the article “Schüler*innen reinigen Stolpersteine” (2017) from the website of the “Meile der Demokratie”