Guthmannshausen Memorial

The Guthmannshausen Memorial is a memorial north of Weimar in Thuringia on the site of the former Guthmannshausen manor in honor of the 12 million civilian German war and post-war victims of the WWII.

History

The dignified and aesthetic memorial site with many trees, similar to a small hero's grove, was ceremoniously inaugurated on 3 August 2014 under the leadership of the first chairman of the "Memorial Site Association", Dipl.-Ing. Klaus-Wolfram Schiedewitz, and over 300 patriotic guests (including Imke Barnstedt, Ursula Haverbeck-Wetzel and Arnold Höfs). The site, successor to the unfinished Borna Memorial (Gedächtnisstätte Borna), serves to commemorate the victims of Allied bombing terror, deportation, expulsion, slave labor, POW camps and Gulags – dedicated to "the defenseless and weaponless victims of the German people in grief and love".

On 23 April 2021, a serious left-wing terrorist arson attack occurred on the memorial. The neo-baroque manor house, with the foundation walls originally from the 13th century, with it's museum and conference venue was almost completely destroyed. Only days later, the first volunteers arrived: including carpenters, stonemasons, painters, roofers, electricians and many more. The reconstruction, financed by donations that arrived from all over Germany and abroad, lasted until the end of 2024.

For us, Guthmannshausen is not only the only memorial site that focuses on the German civilian victims of World War II. It is also a place of education and encounters between the past and the present, between the old and the young, between the existing and the emerging. What is particularly impressive is the courage, the strength and ultimately the life's work of the association's board of directors in preparing this site for us Germans. It will cost a lot of money, energy and time to rebuild the former manor house with its monumental columns in the reception hall. MetaPol Verlag & Medien has therefore decided to provide financial support for the reconstruction of the most unique memorial, education and encounter site that we have in Germany with Guthmannshausen.

Arrangement

The tour of the memorial consists of 12 stones and a central stone (obelisk) bearing dates, inscriptions and excerpts from poems by, among others, Karl Bröger (“Nichts kann uns rauben”), Fritz Michel, Erich Lipok, Ricarda Huch and Dr. h. c. Agnes Miegel (“Es war ein Land”). The first stone bears the inscription:

To the defenseless and weaponless victims

of the German people

in grief and in love

The suffering of millions of Germans

Endured even after the end of the Second World War

The horror of the prisoners in the camps

Their deaths in the wet and cold, hunger and thirst

The despair and torment

The women, children and old people

Chased away from home and farm

Expelled, shot, raped, murdered

Drowned in the icy Baltic Sea

Suffocated in nights of bombing, charred, buried

Through forced labor, hunger and torture

Ruined

Their suffering and death calls out loudly into the

silence of the world

12,000,000 dead

See also

• German Expellees
• Eastern Germany

External links

• Left-wing terrorist arson attack on the Guthmannshausen Memorial (April 2021)
• Guthmannshausen Memorial – Place of virtue and memorial for generations