Faith,love and hope

Jupp Rübsam caught my interest, he managed to "fail" the concept of two public memorials commissioned by the city of Düsseldorf, though in very different ways.

The first, a post-World War I memorial, was rejected by the Nazi government a few years later for not being "German enough". It depicted two soldiers as lions, holding hands. Symbol that didn’t align with the regime’s ideals. The monument was destroyed and only rediscovered in the 1970s.

The second, Mahnmal für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (the memorial you see in the image), originally depicted three Norns, the Nordic goddesses of fate. This was considered too Germanic and pagan. Public debate shifted the theme to Christian virtues of Faith, Love and Hope. While retaining the somber, monumental style of the 1940th, lacking any Christian attributes.

But what do memorials really evoke in us? Are they cultural heritage, artistic reflections of their time, or reminders of what we cannot forget? If most "collective memory" monuments don't really confront the tragic part of history, do they really make us remember? Or do they serve more as symbols of ideology, shaping how future generations see the past?