Holocaust stones stir the ghosts of a Nazi past

When Gunter Demnig, the German artist, set out two decades ago to create Europe's biggest memorial to the victims of Nazi rule his idea seemed a fantasy.

But today his brass-topped cobblestones can be found on the pavements of more than 1,000 cities and towns in Germany and other countries where Hitler's armies wreaked havoc in a war that ended 70 years ago this week. The 50,000 stones are set before the homes of Jews and others killed, deported or forced to flee the Nazis.

Each is marked with the victim's name, date of birth and fate: "murdered in Auschwitz", for example, or "fled to the US". "They are the world's biggest artistic memorial," says 67-year-old Mr Demnig shortly after installing 25 stones late last month in the west German city of Essen. "I do it to remember the victims. And to meet people, especially the relatives."

His work has widespread support, with local enthusiasts providing information on victims, securing official permission and raising money. He lays almost all the stones himself and can barely keep up with demand. As the last survivors of the second world war die, physical records of the conflict are becoming more important, historians say.

But Mr Demnig's stones and other efforts to commemorate victims or acknowledge the past frequently court controversy in Germany, stirring particular passions in a country that has done more than any other to recognise the dark side of its history.

It took Mr Demnig six years to gain permission for his stones from Berlin's 12 district authorities. In Cologne, it took three years and in Munich, the last big German city without them, he still faces opposition. Some critics say simply that the works, known as Stolpersteine, or tripping stones, are dangerous. Others argue that the paving stones insult victims. This is the argument of Mr Demnig's toughest Munich opponent, Charlotte Knobloch, 82, a Holocaust survivor and former president of Germany's Central Council of Jews. She has said the stones invite people "to trample on the Jews like the Nazis did".

Mr Demnig says the opposite is true: "People have to bow to read the names on the stones. They show their respect."

He dismisses suggestions that plaques should be installed in houses. Mr Demnig argues this would be more problematic. "People don't want to have plaques remembering the former inhabitants unless it happened to be Albert Einstein," he says. "Some of them know that their parents or grandparents bought [Jewish-owned] property [at unfairly low prices]."

Enthusiasm for the stones was clear among the 50 or so people gathered in Essen last month.

But even here there is controversy, if not about the stones, then about the past. The original names of the two quiet streets where the stones were laid were changed by the Nazis to the surnames of Karl von Einem and Hans von Seeckt, authoritarian generals who criticised democracy in the 1920s and so helped Hitler to power.

The generals' critics campaigned unsuccessfully for a return to the original street names. In 2013, they lost a local referendum in which 80 per cent of those polled backed the generals.

Dagmar Rode, a local district councillor who fought to keep the generals' names, says: "After more than 70 years, people feel that these street names are part of Essen. In any case, these generals were historically separate from the Nazis."

The situation in Essen is not unusual. The names of Hitler and his henchmen are long gone from street signs in almost every German town and city. But those of others linked to the Nazis often remain. Controversy surrounds Paul Hindenburg, the president who, despite his misgivings, in 1933 appointed Hitler chancellor.

Mr Wirsching says he was a "decisive figure" in the Nazis' rise to power. But Hindenburg's supporters say the ageing first world war general who died in 1934 cannot be held responsible for what followed. Their view has largely prevailed - across Germany campaigns to rename streets called Hindenburg have almost all failed.

There is even an attempt to name a street after a Nazi in Coburg, a picturesque town in central Germany. Michael Stoschek, the head of Brose, a big family-owned car parts company with a $5.3bn annual turnover, wants a street named after his grandfather, Max Brose, a member of the Nazi party honoured by the regime as a "military industry leader".

In a postwar denazification court hearing, he was judged to have been a "follower" - a low level of identification with the Nazis - and fined. Mr Stoschek was rebuffed when he asked Coburg town council 10 years ago to name a street after Mr Brose.

This year, he renewed his bid, backed by a new Brose-financed study which, Mr Stoschek says, exonerates his grandfather. The town council, which voted in March to rehabilitate Mr Brose symbolically, is due to rule on the street-naming this month.

Edmund Frey, a local campaigner, said: "A man with this background cannot in 2015, 70 years after the war ended, be honoured in our town. It would be a humiliation for Coburg." When it comes to recording history, even street signs and paving stones matter.

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