18.05.2026
“The Stolpersteine will not be cleaned this year.” The far right as a challenge for memorials (and memorial work)
Autor*innen: Rolf Frankenberger, Tim Fröhlich, Katharina Mayer
To stumble is to lose one’s footing. Or to break out of a rut. Remembering historical events breaks us out of the rut of the present and places it in relation to the past. Which is not necessarily pleasant or good. Rather, all too often it is frightening, unsettling, and challenges one’s own understanding of the present. Remembrance gnaws at certainties, forcing us to reflect on the present against the backdrop of the past. And to take responsibility, to learn from history. This applies to individual as well as collective remembrance and, by extension, to the culture of remembrance. In this country, memorial sites form part of this culture, often closely linked to the remembrance of the Shoah and other crimes against humanity committed under National Socialism. Consequently, however, remembrance and the culture of remembrance inevitably become the subject of struggles for interpretative authority over history. This is particularly true when remembrance stands in the way of the realisation of one’s own interests and ideologies, causing them, as it were, to stumble. The far right, in particular, has made it its mission to remove such stumbling blocks – including the literal ones – and to reinterpret history.In this article, the authors first demonstrate how these reinterpretations are ideologically derived and justified by the far right and, in particular, by the so-called ‘New Right’.In a second step, we discuss the implications of these developments for memorial sites and the challenges this poses for their practical work. Finally, we offer some suggestions on how to deal with far-right narratives, hostility and actors in the context of memorial work.
The article appeared in May 2026 in the print magazine Gedänkstätten-Rundschau No. 36 on pages 1–7. The journal is published twice a year and is available by subscription, in bookshops or through retailers in the region.
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