About the installation
On 9 November 1935 the NSDAP inaugurated the two ‘Temples of Honour’ as part of the National Socialists’ new centre of cult and power on Königsplatz in a massive propaganda spectacle. The sixteen ‘blood witnesses of the Movement’ who were killed during the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 were reinterred here.
After the end of the war in 1945, the US armed forces had the bodies replaced in their original graves and the ‘temples’ blown up in 1947. The foundation bases still exist today and are partly hidden by bushes. Natural vegetation has covered up the former Nazi cult sites but not rendered them invisible.
Time and again alternative uses have been discussed and discarded. Standstill with birdsong now prevails. The installation Rubble and Honour drew attention to the present situation: ships’ fenders symbolise the decades-long ‘touch me not’ approach taken towards the remains of the walls that are no longer in the public perception.
Rubble and Honour was the visualisation of these significant empty spaces that, as a result of their unresolved status, reveal how the process of remembrance knows no end.
