The many names of the IG-Farben-Haus - table

Date	Name	Building use
1930-1945	IG-Farben-Haus	Headquarters of IG Farben AG
1945-1952	‘Farben Building’ (unofficial name used by the Americans) ‘Little Amerika’ (unofficial name used by the public)	US headquarters
1952-1975		European headquarters of the US V Corps
1975-1996	General Creighton W. Abrams Building
1996-2001	IG-Farben-Haus (not an official renaming)	Bought and renovated by the state of Hesse
2001-	Poelzig Ensemble (suggested) IG-Farben-Haus Poelzig Bau (an official name has not yet been decided)	Main buildings for the Faculty of Humanities, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University,  Frankfurt am Main
Table 1 – The many names of the IG-Farben-Haus

Niemand kann aus der Geschichte seines Volkes austreten

"Niemand kann aus der Geschichte seines Volkes austreten. Man soll und darf die Vergangenheit nicht 'auf sich beruhen lassen', weil sie sonst auferstehen und zu neuer Gegenwart werden könnte."Jean Améry, 1975 

“No one can escape from the history of his people. 

One should and must not ‘allow the past to rest,’ 

because it otherwise could be resurrected and become the new present.”

Jean Améry, 1975  

Information on the Gedenktafel (memorial plaque) at the IG Farben-Haus found here (in German) http://www.stadtgeschichte-ffm.de/service/gedenktafeln/ig_farben_haus.html

Translation of the inscription and more information on Jean Améry found here (English or German): http://www.wollheim-memorial.de/en/der_essayband_jenseits_von_schuld_und_suehne_von_jean_amry_1966

BBC News - The rise of genocide memorials

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16642344

Why do people visit genocide memorials? This article does not really answer the question but gives some interesting views from visitors, including a couple who made a world tour of genocide memorials. It does touch on some of the important issues faced by curators and visitors though - for example how they should be presented, how recent events should be depicted and if human remains should be displayed. 

The IG Farben Haus was not a site of the Holocaust though its victims are remembered there in the form of the Wollheim Memorial and the memorial plaque at the front of the building. In this way the perpetrators and 'Schreibtisch-Täter' are necessarily brought to mind -as it was they, not the killers who were active in the building. 

The many names of the IG-Farben-Haus

After mentioning the changing names of the building, it seems it would be useful to offer a little summary:

1928-1945: IG-Farben-Haus

1945-1975: Farben Building (unofficial)

1975-1996: General Creighton W. Abrams Building (official name according to the US military based there)

Summer 2001: Poelzig Ensemble (suggested by Werber Meissner, the President of Johann Wolfgang University)

From 2001 - Poelzig Ensemble, IG-Farben-Haus (no official decision was reached)


Other names have included "Poelzig Bau" (Poelzig Bulding) and "IG-Farben-Hochhaus" (IG Farben Highrise) and so far there is still confusion about what the building should be called. Most university literature now mentions the 'IG-Farben-Haus', but some documents claim the 'official' name is 'Poelzig-Bau'.

The Name Game

There is a very interesting discussion panel happening at the Guggenheim website at the moment: http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/interact/online-forum/the-name-game/session-1


It is all about names. According to the moderator Mark Abley "This Forum will be about the power of names, the ways we allow them or ask them to define us, and their vexed relationship with the rest of language as well as the world beyond words."


Robert Jones is a branding consultant on the panel and mentions the importance of name changes: "So our view is that the fact of a name change can get people to stop and think again; the content of the name change can give a clue about what to think; and changing what people think can of course change what they do."


That could well be relevant to the name changes of the IG-Farben-Haus. How would the name 'Poelzig-Bau' change people's perceptions of it. Instead of bearing the name of a perpetrator corporation implicated in slave labour, the house would be named for its acclaimed architect. Would they then be less likely to think of the building's (and Germany's) difficult past and work through it? 


It would have been rather useful if this forum had happened a month ago so I could have mentioned it in my dissertation!

Dauerausstellung

http://www.init-design.de/ausstellungen.html?id=6

Two days before the university's ceremonial opening of the building, this exhibition was opened inside the IG-Farben-Haus. It chronicles the house's past on glass plates, in both English and German. According to the designers, the glass plates bring transparency to the building's complex past.

Was the creation and installation of the exhibition a sign that the university wasn't afraid of its past? As Schröder tried to encourage Germans to engage with the past but not be scared of or obsessed by it, it does seem like this was an attempt to live that neue Unbefangenkeit (new impartiality). The history of the area is given and not covered up. The whole history of the building, and not just the Nazi connections is displayed. However, unfortunately it's not clear from what I can find online whether the RAF bombings of the 1970s are covered, or at what depth.

But why was it opened two days before the moving-in celebrations? Was it to give the press time to write up informed (by what the university wanted them to see) background pieces for the day of the celebrations? Or was it to move focus away from the troubled past of the building and onto the future?

Memorials at the IG Farben Haus

My dissertation is about how the IG Farben Haus (or, more correctly, the people using the building) is (are) dealing with its past. One of the ways of dealing with the past is by remembering it. One way to force memory is to create a memorial (though some, such as Young, 1993, would claim that people build memorials to do the work for them, so they don't have to think about the past any more).

On the site of the IG Farben Haus is the Norbert Wollheim Memorial. this consists of a pavilion where visitors can see an exhibition about those forced to go to the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp at Auschwitz and work for IG Farben. The exhibition also concerns the survivors' fight for compensation from the IG Farben company and from the German government. 

The memorial also consists of photo panels of Jewish people who were sent to the camps, in the days before the Third Reich, which are distributed around the site. In addition, the website http://www.wollheim-memorial.de/ is also part of the memorial and offers a lot of interesting and thought-provoking material, including a detailed history of IG Farben AG, the story of the fight for compensation, and video interviews with survivors of the camps. It is available in German and English.

It is interesting that this memorial is on the site. What does this tell us about how the past is being dealt with? It obviously shows a willingness to engage with the very specific and odious past of the company which built the IG Farben Haus. But is it there to do the memory work for people? Or does it bring the current generation nearer than the last to history (cf Frei, 2005)? And is this really healthy? Several historians have claimed that Germany is 'obsessed' with the Nazi period. And while he was Chancellor, Schröder tried to ensure that Germany could deal with its past in a 'normal' way, working through it without the obsession. 

There is also a memorial plaque to the victims of the Third Reich on site. But no memorials of the American times (although there is still an Eisenhower Room) and certainly nothing to recall the terrorist attacks of the 1970s and early 1980s. Information about the terrorism carried out in the building is almost impossible to find. Homewood (2005) comments that the memory terrorism seems to have been tightly controlled by politicians and the media, to create the impression that Germans were in total solidarity against the terrorists. Could this be the reason why the attacks are not commemorated? Although they would be dedicated to the memory of the the victims (one person died and others were badly injured in the Frankfurt attacks), they could also be regarded as memorialising (and to some extent, glorifying) the acts themselves, or it may be feared that they could become a sort of pilgrimage destination for terrorist sympathisers. This would undermine the anti-terrorist solidarity.

The terrorists also claimed that their attacks were parallel to attacks on Nazi institutions (van der Knapp, 2005). The re-stirring of this bad memory may also be part of the reason that the current users of the building do not want to be forced to remember. There is an unwillingness to criticise the American troops who were stationed in the building, as they were seen as great friends and allies to the German people. Mießner (2001) commented that the 50 years of American use of the building stand for the Frankfurt Documents and the beginning of German federalism, the founding of German states, the airlifts, and for the establishment of democracy and freedom in Germany. To have to remember a time when the Americans were regarded so badly and as 'Nazis' would be unthinkable. 

The German 'obsession' with the National Socialist Period seems to remain on the IG Farben grounds, at least as far as memorials are concerned. The two major memorials are to the victims of the Third Reich and this is the period of history with which the users of the site are now most engaged, despite it only lasting 12 years. The Americans were in the building for over 50 years. The terrorist attacks took place over a period of 10 years and are scarcely mentioned. Although the site seems to be dealing enthusiastically with one aspect of its past, other events are being forgotten or glossed over.