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VI. Buildings Integral to the Former Life and/or Persecution of Jews in Harburg.
5. Sand/Harburger Ring.
Hamburg Anti-Fascist Memorial Citizens of Hamburg and visitors to the city were invited to add their names to those of the artists on the tower. It was intended to commit people to being and remaining vigilant. As each section of the 12 metre high pillar was covered in names so was that particular section lowered into the ground, until finally the tower was completely beneath the ground. The belief was that no permanent object can be a substitute for the fight against injustice. This was the artistic concept and is what remains of the original memorial, written in seven languages, on the site of the former pillar.
In 1986 in Harburg Ring, close to the Harburg Town Hall, the pillar was erected on top of a brick platform situated between Hauptstraße and the entrance to the underground commuter (S) station. The 1m² crosss-section lead pillar was lowered into the ground in eight stages until all that remained was the top of the pillar as a lead plaque level with the ground, and a small window in a door in the platform beneath, with a view of a pedestrian subway and the shaft with the buried pillar.
 
 
The concealed memorial symbolizes the suppressed memory of the holocaust. There were 60,000
visible reactions added to the memorial. The concept was totally successful; the lead surface
was substancially covered in both a positive and negative manner. In addition to signatures
there were sayings and quotations, racial remarks and swastikas were visible and overwritten
with "Nazis out!", felt-tip pen graffiti, and spray-tags, scratches and scrapes, and a hole
gouged into the lead surface in naked violence. The most extreme reaction was that it
received a bullet shot.
The staged lowering of the memorial, programmed events and discussions enabled the artists to repeatedly bring the memorial into public debate and maintain a high profile over the eight year period. Following this project Jochen Gerz created an even more abstract "memorial" in Saarbrücken in which the names of Jewish cemeteries were written on the underside of stones in a palace courtyard. In 1990 Jochen Gerz was awarded the Bremen Roland-Prize for "Kunst im öffentlichen Raum"/"Art in the Environment". In Bremen he developed an artistic project in which no visible object was created; the "memorial" existed in a survey and public discussion. Both Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz as artists represent a concept of art in which the recipient is not only personally involved but is invited to take the responsibility for the final shape of the work of art.
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