Obj. ID: 57500
  Memorials  Statue of the unknown concentration camp prisoner in Dachau, Germany, 1950

“On March 22 1933, the Nazi regime opened a concentration camp on the grounds of the disused Königlich Bayerische Pulver- und Munitionsfabrik Dachau, a defunct factory complex that once produced gunpowder and ammunition. This prison and place of terror existed for twelve years., more than 200,000 prisoners from over 40 nations were imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp and its subcamps; at least 41,500 persons died here of hunger and illness, from the torture they suffered, were murdered, or perished from the consequences of their imprisonment.”

(https://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/en/historical-site/historical-site-memorial-site/)

 In 1948 the U.S. military returned the grounds of the former prisoners’ camp to the Bavarian state. Germans expelled from East Germany and elsewhere were houses on the site.

The bronze statue by Fritz Koelle was the first memorial on the site to recognize its past as a notorious concentration camp. Historian Peter Marcuse has described the history of the statue, which is a greatly modified version of a more vivid statue of two inmates prepared by the same sculptor and originally selected for installation:

 “…This early sculpture was based on a 1946 statuette of two inmates by a German socialist sculptor who had been briefly imprisoned by the Gestapo. Fritz Koelle’s “Inferno,” depicting a clothed inmate supporting and pointing to a naked, emaciated comrade, was published on invitations to a September 1949 commemorative event, with a call for donations so that it could be erected as a memorial. That design, selected by survivor Philipp Auerbach, who headed the Bavarian state authority responsible for Holocaust survivors (then called “racial, religious, and political persecutees”), was intended to stand in front of the Dachau crematorium. It was immediately criticized by other survivors and the military government as being too graphic and accusatory—meanings they did not wish to represent. One Dachau survivor wrote to his French comrades that the sculpture was “universally condemned” because it “immortalized the horrors.” Memories of the Nazi camps were still very vivid at the time, especially amid the plentiful physical remnants, and the sensibilities of survivors and the relatives of the victims had to be considered as well. Soon another design by the same artist was chosen instead: a depiction of a single forlorn-looking inmate, slightly smaller than life-size. It was dedicated in 1950, when the redesign of the Dachau crematorium enclave as a peacefully landscaped park was completed.

A comparison of the two Koelle sculptures reveals some of the formal considerations that still typify Holocaust memorials. The reduction from two figures to one is typical of memorials in Western Europe, where the anonymity and isolation of individuals caught in the machinery of mass murder tends to be emphasized. The memorials in Western Europe are also far more likely to be abstract than figurative, while in the socialist countries of the Eastern Bloc (with the limited exceptions of Poland and Yugoslavia), most memorials are figurative in the style of socialist realism, and they often depict groups of people so as to express solidarity and symbolize anti-fascist resistance as a movement. In the final Dachau design, the graphic skeletal nudity of the original figures is covered by a baggy overcoat and trousers; the accusatory right hand is concealed in a coat pocket. The forwardly thrust head is drawn back and tilted at a slight angle, giving the figure a contemplative cast. The inscription on the pedestal still melds contemplation with accusation, however: “To honor the dead, to admonish the living.”  [Marcuse 2010, pp 71-73]