Conflicting Remembrance: Negotiating Memory and Religion Through Art at the Buchenwald Memorial

Abstract

This article examines the interplay of memory, politics, and religion at the Buchenwald Memorial, focusing on the 2024 edition of the Genius Loci festival. Once staged by the German Democratic Republic as a monumental site of antifascist resistance, the memorial has undergone multiple reinterpretations, reflecting shifting regimes of remembrance and contested political claims, and an architectural vocabulary informed by Christian metaphors. Drawing on Durkheim’s sociology of religion and concepts of memory (Nora, Assmann), the analysis highlights how memorial architecture, ritual practices, and artistic interventions frame collective memory as both a political resource and a civic challenge. The Genius Loci festival exemplifies how contemporary art can reactivate debates around memorial spaces, exposing their religious frame of reference while simultaneously opening them to contemporary renegotiation.

1. Introduction

This article analyzes how the 2024 Genius Loci festival at the Buchenwald Memorial reveals the dynamic interplay of memory, politics, and religion, showing how artistic intervention can both expose the implicitly religious dimensions of collective remembrance and transform a historically charged memorial site into a space of negotiation. Given the thematic focus of this Special Issue on Interreligious Dialogue and Conflict, the following reflections situate my argument within broader sociological debates on the role of religion in the constitution, perception, and negotiation of conflict in contemporary societies.

Conflicts are ubiquitous and play a significant role in shaping the everyday actions of individuals and societies. Contemporary sociological discourses address conflicts, their resolutions, and the strategies employed to address them on various levels. Depending on the focus of the research, religions are commonly viewed as both a driver of conflict and a means of reconciliation (Korostelina et al. 2025). This approach presupposes a concept of religion separated from other societal forces and is often attributed to pre-modern, non-European societies. In contrast, in modern social science—despite longstanding critiques of the secularization thesis (e.g., by Casanova 1994; Berger 1999; Taylor 2007; Joas 2021)—scholars typically assume that religion has a diminished role in public life and is largely relegated to the private sphere. This supposedly “peaceful” arrangement is often seen as being disrupted by migration, thereby externalizing religious tensions as a phenomenon attributed to external or foreign influences rather than to internal societal dynamics.

In this context, I aim to challenge the functionalist view of religion as inherently conflict-generating, or as something “superfluous” or merely tolerated—at best domesticated—in modern Western democratic societies. The goal is to demonstrate that religion still plays a prominent role in German society, a role that is often overlooked as long as “religion” is exclusively identified by the number of actively practicing members of institutionalized religions. To analyze and explain the intricate interweaving of religious and political elements in contemporary public artistic practice, I will take a broader perspective. Here, I will not approach “religion” solely as a societal institution (e.g., the predominant churches, such as the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany) nor as an internalized “belief system” confined to the worship of one or multiple deities. Instead, I will focus on practices in the public sphere that promote the negotiation of a societal framework, where the acts of remembering and forgetting are essential components. These practices take place on occasions where the overall orientation of society is demonstrated and continually renegotiated. Religion plays a role in this process insofar as participants are repeatedly exposed to visual and performative patterns shaped by religious practices—such as pilgrimages, commemorations of the dead, and communal celebrations. Over time, these patterns become embedded in their collective consciousness. This process of familiarization reinforces prevailing norms and beliefs, making the represented reality appear self-evident and beyond question (Durkheim [1912] 1995).

Following this, I will explore approaches that offer a broader conception of the religious, particularly drawing on Durkheim and on concepts of collective memory enacted in specific spaces. The focus of this contribution is an analysis of an artistic intervention that can only be fully understood through a comparative examination of political and religious elements that intersect in the memorial site. This section proceeds in four steps: first, it outlines the historical transformation of the site; second, it analyzes the architectural program of the memorial; third, it examines its ideological and ritual dimensions; and finally, it addresses the contested status of remembrance after 1990. I conclude with a contemporary event, the façade festival with projections titled Genius Loci1, where each year selected urban spaces, including facades, parks, and monuments, are transformed into backdrops for video art. This study demonstrates how religious, ideological, and political elements converge in an artistic performance, gaining additional weight through the integration of certain elements of “sacredness.” It illustrates the intertwining of religion and politics within public space, shedding light on the broader social and cultural processes at play.

2. Buchenwald: From Concentration Camp to Memorial Site

The history of the site under analysis is located on the Ettersberg hill, northwest of Weimar—a city associated with Goethe, Schiller, and Herder, the cradle of the Bauhaus, but also an early Nazi stronghold in Thuringia. Since the late 1930s, this place has been a focal point of German and European history. Its history spans different political systems: from 1937 to 1945, it was one of the largest concentration camps in Nazi Germany and was given the name Buchenwald. After the end of the Second World War, from 1945 to 1950, the Soviet occupying authorities converted parts of the former concentration camp into Special Camp No. 2 (Speziallager Nr. 2), where they primarily interned local NSDAP officials, as well as individuals accused of collaboration.2 In the 1950s, the German Democratic Republic established a dedicated memorial on the site, which in 1958 was inaugurated as the GDR’s first national monument. The memorial served not only as a place of commemoration but also as a venue for large-scale state ceremonies and mass events that reinforced the antifascist founding narrative of the socialist state.

With the collapse of the GDR in 1989/90, this antifascist master narrative lost its political foundation, creating a crisis of legitimacy for the memorial. Ritualized ceremonies were discontinued, and for a period the site experienced neglect. Following German reunification, the entire area on the Ettersberg was comprehensively redesigned. The former concentration campgrounds became the primary site of commemoration and increasingly developed into a place of historical-political education aimed at promoting democratic values (Marose and Schütze 2021, p. 51).

Today, Buchenwald—including both the concentration camp remains and the GDR-era memorial—remains a space in transition. Successive political regimes and shifting cultural frameworks have repeatedly reshaped its meaning. The site continues to function as a terrain in which historical interpretation, commemoration practices, and contemporary debates about responsibility, guilt, and democratic identity intersect.

3. Architectural Program: Spatial Narrative and Symbolic Structure of the Buchenwald Memorial

Designed in the 1950s by the Buchenwald Architects Collective together with sculptor Fritz Cremer, the memorial complex combines monumental forms reminiscent of ancient Rome and Egypt with Christian imagery. The area is best understood as a ritual landscape drawing heavily on symbols of Passion and Resurrection. Its spatial choreography leads visitors clearly defined, unidirectional path descending toward the three mass graves—evoking the “Night of Fascism”—and then upward toward the towering bell tower, the “Light of Freedom.”3

The tour of the memorial begins at its monumental entrance. The stone gateway marks the transition into a secluded space, framing the visitors’ experience as extraordinary. From an imposing threshold, a grand staircase descends toward the graves, flanked by seven monumental steles with figural reliefs—each symbolizing one year of the camp’s existence. The steles narrate a sequence of scenes: (1) the construction of the camp, (2) the arrival of the prisoners, (3) forced labor in the quarry, (4) the suffering and murder of the prisoners, (5) solidarity despite suffering, (6) the Thälmann4 commemoration and preparation for resistance, and (7) liberation.

The tour proceeds along the southern slope of the Ettersberg, following the so-called Street of Nations, which connects three mass graves from the concentration camp. Here the SS, during the camp’s dissolution in the spring of 1945 as the Allies advanced, buried approximately 3000 dead (with another 2000 in the adjacent burial fields). The path is accompanied by 18 pylons—monumental columns with fire bowls modeled after ancient Egyptian prototypes, adding a ceremonial setting to the space. These pylons bear the names of 18 selected nations from which people were deported to Buchenwald and were lit during commemorative ceremonies. Shortly after the memorial’s inauguration, both the selection of the countries and the use of the term “nations” were already criticized, with doubts raised about whether this term was suitable for representing the fates of the persecuted, demonstrating the situatedness of GDR memorials in general (Endlich 2014, p. 70).

The neoclassical style of totalitarian architecture is evident throughout, particularly at the Street of Nations, which leads to the Stairway of Freedom and the bell tower containing what can be seen as relics: earth and ashes from Nazi concentration camps all over Europe. In front of the bell tower a bronze sculpture by Fritz Cremer symbolizes the resistance struggle and self-liberation of prisoners under communist leadership. The Buchenwald Bell rings every hour, completing the memorial’s journey from “death and struggle to victory.” The construction of the memorial was the result of a power struggle inside the socialist party SED whose leadership took direct control of Buchenwald’s memory, transforming it into the National Memorial and a core element of the GDR’s founding myth (Neumann-Thein 2021, p. 73). Together, these elements demonstrate how the memorial translated the GDR’s antifascist founding narrative into a monumental and carefully staged spatial form.

4. Political Narrative: The GDR’s Antifascist Myth

The spatial choreography organizes the visit as a unidirectional journey from death to liberation. This narrative is less a historical account than a symbolic staging designed to glorify antifascist resistance and the myth of the prisoners’ “self-liberation.” This becomes evident in the visual representation of historical events within the memorial complex. The way in which the events of the camp’s seven years are condensed and arranged recalls ritualized journeys from darkness to redemption and from death to resurrection.

While the official narrative acknowledged the prisoners’ suffering, it presented them as a unified group without distinction. The true focus, however, was on celebrating the armed resistance and the victory over the SS and fascism. This simplified and rigid historical perspective became firmly established by the early 1960s and remained the dominant view until the GDR’s collapse. (Neumann-Thein 2021, p. 72). The politicization is made explicit in contemporary guidebooks and official explanatory materials. A Guide to Workers’ Memorial Sites in Weimar explains:

“In our socialist fatherland, the great achievements accomplished for the happiness of the people—achievements that embody the finest traditions in the history of the German people—become a binding legacy, preserved in honor and carried forward. When placed in a living relationship with the socialist present, this legacy is reflected in our people’s historical consciousness. Historical consciousness is, so to speak, a component of socialist consciousness, through which the present is understood and the future mastered.” (Günther 1977, p. 3).

Clearly, the act of commemorating the dead served a political message. A much-quoted phrase stated: “To honor the dead, to warn the living” (Günther 1977, p. 18). This admonition later became one of the dominant—and at times even officially mandated—features of remembrance culture in the GDR concerning the Nazi era. (Endlich 2014, p. 62).

In the metahistorical narrative of memorial’s architecture, the deaths of concentration camp prisoners were invested with additional meaning and framed as sacrifices on the path toward the ideal socialist society. Within this teleological narrative, life and struggle in the camp were interpreted as resistance and ultimate victory under socialist leadership. The myth of Buchenwald’s resistance and self-liberation became a foundational narrative of the GDR, whose self-conception was rooted in antifascism (Knigge and Seidel 1997). The reshaped campgrounds, together with the monumental memorial complex, formed a self-referential system in which monuments, exhibitions, publications, and artworks mutually authenticated one another and reinforced the official story (Neumann-Thein 2021, p. 75). This overarching dimension of remembrance was not left open to plural interpretation but absorbed into a state-controlled memorial culture.

5. Ritualization and Religious Form in the GDR Buchenwald Memorial

To understand how this spatial and symbolic program operated socially, it is useful to turn to Émile Durkheim’s theory of ritual, which provides a conceptual framework for analyzing the collective dynamics at work. Durkheim argues that rituals generate “collective effervescence,” emotional intensities that produce a shared moral order (Durkheim [1912] 1995, p. 1). In the GDR, the memorial was used to ritually anchor a specific collective identity. As Koenig (2024, p. 270) notes, Durkheim’s sociology of religion was motivated by the attempt to understand “present-day humanity” and its “religious nature,” making his model applicable to modern memorial practices. The memorial created a sacred time-space: visits, ceremonies, and anniversaries marked a ritual separation from ordinary time, offering participants a sense of heightened communality and shared purpose. Mourning the victims was integrated into a moral framework in which antifascism, socialism, and international solidarity appeared not merely as political commitments but as binding normative imperatives. The spatio-visual program reinforced this effect.

The memorial’s design employs an eclectic mix of architectural elements to guide visitors through a site saturated with religious reminiscences and widely shared cultural metaphors that reinforce the socialist narrative. The complex was explicitly conceived for pedagogical purposes and for ritualized commemorations aligned with an ideological calendar. Its spatial design allows only one prescribed direction for visitors. The layout—with its clearly marked “entrance” and “exit” and its carefully structured pathways—discourages, and effectively prevents, movement in the reverse direction from the tower back toward the entrance. The entire spatial construction thus functions as the stage for a carefully choreographed communal ritual as memory in action.

The sequence begins with seven steles decorated with figurative reliefs that narrate the prisoners’ experiences—individual and collective suffering, solidarity, and eventual liberation—thereby framing memory as a teleological progression culminating in the triumph of socialist hegemony. Although this arrangement conveys a political message, the spatial disposition of the steles along a clearly defined path creates a structure reminiscent of the Passion narrative and thus evokes the Christian Via Crucis, the Stations of the Cross, which depict Christ’s path to crucifixion and are designed to invite contemplation and shape a deliberate emotional dramaturgy (Lacoste 2005). The Via Crucis itself is based on a combination of texts from the Synoptic Gospels and later legendary traditions. In the German-speaking regions, an early form with seven stations was initially established; over time, the sequence of fourteen stations became generally accepted. Influenced by late medieval Passion mysticism, the Stations of the Cross developed into a structured devotional practice from the fifteenth century onward, traditionally performed on specific occasions, most prominently on Good Friday (Hollerweger et al. 1997, pp. 466–67).

At Buchenwald, however, this originally liturgical structure was reworked into a socialist narrative centered on antifascist resistance. The commemorative pathway functions analogously to a contemplative pilgrimage, a technique that can be witnessed also in contemporary celebrations connected to war-memorials: through collective movement along a prescribed route, visitors participate in a transformative process of remembrance mediated by architectural artifacts and shaped by interaction with the social environment (Murakami 2014). Both the Via Crucis procession and the commemorative pathway at Buchenwald foster reflection on suffering, individually and collectively, through embodied movement. In Catholic tradition, the Stations of the Cross often culminate in an ascent toward a pilgrimage church (Hollerweger et al. 1997, p. 467), situating participants within a redemptive narrative and reinforcing communal belonging. The physical movement through the Buchenwald Memorial appropriates this structure, redirecting reflection toward socialist ideals and embedding participants within a politically framed narrative of suffering and liberation.

The question remains: how and why did the GDR, despite its socialist orientation and official distancing from religion, so clearly draw on Christian metaphors in its political rhetoric? One plausible explanation is that these symbolic forms were culturally legible; even in a formally secular state, large parts of the population possessed a religiously shaped cultural background that enabled them to grasp the underlying symbolic structure. This background could then be reworked and overwritten with new meanings. For example, a brochure from the Committee of Antifascist Resistance Fighters in the GDR speaks explicitly of Passion, death, and resurrection.

“What you see here is the new Passion that overshadows our century and will forever bear witness to what a dying social order was capable of doing to human beings. On one side, beasts in gray and black uniforms, the likes of which human history had never before seen in such brutality; on the other side, antifascist fighters who, with tenacity, determination, and comradeship, defended the truth once recognized—who, with perseverance and courage and under indescribable sacrifice, overcame the night of fascism, saved thousands of people of all nations, and at last were able to plant the red flag of victory on the summit of the Ettersberg.”

(Komitee der Antifaschistischen Widerstandskämpfer in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik 1960, p. 13).

The pathos embedded in texts written shortly after the memorial’s construction remained prominent in public ceremonies for many decades. Suffering was framed as a “new Passion,” and victory was implicitly associated with an overcoming of death—an analogy that resonates with the Christian celebration of resurrection at Easter. A well-known visual parallel can be found in the Weimar Altarpiece (1555) by Lucas Cranach, which depicts the triumphant risen Christ in a red mantle bearing a victory banner while defeating the devil in the form of a dragon.5 In this iconic image for Weimar, suffering and triumph are combined in a single composition. The memorial’s evocation—and reinterpretation—of Christian motifs can therefore be understood as part of a broader strategy to mobilize culturally familiar symbolic structures and align visitors emotionally with the narrative of a new historical era.

In the whole socialist period, the parapet of the monumental bell tower at the end of the tour served as a podium for representatives of the GDR state and party leadership during mass events, such as the swearing-in ceremonies for soldiers of the National People’s Army (NVA), worker celebrations, or matriculation ceremonies, all of which were regularly held in the square in front of it (Neumann-Thein 2021, p. 75). In this way, the memorial functioned not only as a site of remembrance but as a carefully staged arena in which political authority, collective ritual, and culturally resonant symbolic forms were fused to sustain the GDR’s antifascist self-understanding.

6. Selective Memory and Camp 2

In contrast, the mass graves discovered on the southern slope of the Ettersberg embody a different symbolic register. Staged with monumental, Roman-style ring walls enclosing three large burial pits, they confront visitors with the physical remains of the victims themselves. Unlike narrative markers, e.g., the steles that commemorate episodes, the graves demand recognition of the dead as bodies. Anonymous burial grounds, such as war graves, thus operate not merely as individual memorials but as collective sites. Pierre Nora coined the term lieu de mémoire (“site of memory”) to describe places, objects, or events that embody collective remembrance. For Nora, such sites acquire significance only when they are invested with a symbolic aura (Nora 1989, p. 19). The immediacy of human remains provides the most powerful historical testimony—second only to the presence of survivors. In this sense, the bones of thousands of tortured and murdered individuals acquire a singular significance. In this way, the memorial intertwines political narration and material presence, structuring remembrance through forms that resonate with religious patterns of reverence, sacrifice, and collective meaning-making.

The situation of commemoration and grievance becomes more complex with regard to the victims of Soviet Special Camp No. 2, which was installed in parts of the structure of the former Nazi camp from 1945 to 1950. While many detainees were arrested as former functionaries, not all internees could be shown to have participated in Nazi crimes to the same extent. In contrast to the prominently commemorated victims of the Nazi concentration camp, those who perished in Special Camp No. 2 were initially excluded from public remembrance. The several thousand victims—detained as security threats, at times on arbitrary grounds—were long denied official recognition and have only since 2007 been commemorated in a separate memorial area marked by crosses, stones, and forest steles, accompanied by annual ceremonies at a redesigned site of mourning (Morré 2004).

The remembrance of the Soviet Special Camps at Buchenwald remains highly contested also today. As Judith Butler has argued in a very different context, although all bodies are socially vulnerable, only some lives are conferred value and acknowledged as grievable (Butler 2004, p. 20). This applies as well to the victims of the Special Camp No. 2. Because the site was both a Nazi concentration camp and a Soviet camp, debates frequently revolve around the danger of relativizing or equating the injustices committed before and after 1945. After 1990, the marking of mass graves belonging to Special Camp No. 2 triggered disputes over terminology, victim status, and the appropriate form of commemoration. Acts of protest, vandalism, biographical interventions by relatives, controversies over the inclusion or removal of former perpetrators’ names, and attempts at political instrumentalization demonstrate how deeply divided public memory remains.6 Buchenwald thus emerges as more than a historical site of layered violence; it is a carefully constructed landscape of remembrance in which architecture, narrative, and material remains are disposed to shape collective memory.

7. After 1990: Crisis and Renegotiation

However, the original design of the memorial did not provide space for individual mourning or private commemoration. The architects of the GDR memorial effectively harnessed the potential of collective effervescence in their monumental design, which, with its austere architectural language and layout intended for mass gatherings, also recalls structures from the 1930s. It is precisely this emphasis on large-scale collective events that continues to provoke debates in the city of Weimar today, particularly regarding how the memorial can be integrated into the city’s self-image, given its striking formal similarities to projects from the National Socialist era (Warda 2021, p. 91). In this sense, the memorial may be read not only as a commemoration of Nazi crimes but also as an (unintended) illustration of the de-individualizing practices common to authoritarian systems. Consequently, several artistic interventions have been introduced to enliven the historical space and to provide it with contemporary significance. An exhibition curated by the artists’ collective pink tank in 2018 titled “Mahnmal im Kollektiv” (Memorial in the Collective!) raised questions about the future of the memorial site stating: “After 60 years the memorial leaves us with a couple of questions: what does it stand for today? Can we take it beyond its ideological dimension? Can it be part of our future memory at all?” (pink tank 2018). Other exhibitions sought to address this by broadening the narrative to include previously marginalized groups—Jews, Sinti and Roma, women (Cremer’s statues show only men), and homosexuals—and by acknowledging Soviet repression through the integration of the Special Camp 2 into the site’s history (Neumann-Thein 2021, p. 76).

As has been demonstrated in previous descriptions, forms of public remembrance of the dead and the celebration of the new era frequently draw on the unique aura of certain places to create communal, inspiring, even religious experiences. It has become clear, however, that sites of memory are not static repositories of meaning but dynamic spaces whose significance must be continually renegotiated. This became particularly evident after 1990 and is crucial for understanding the layered meanings activated by contemporary performances. Such renegotiation is not confined to symbolic debates or memory politics alone; it is also materially anchored in space itself, as specific locations retain the capacity to evoke powerful—and often conflicting—memories. As cultural scholar Aleida Assmann has shown, the link between memory and place has long generated powerful personal and collective experiences in which historical and religious associations are preserved and reaffirmed. Yet when traditions fade and, as is increasingly the case today, survivors of the camps are no longer present as witnesses, sites of remembrance risk losing their immediacy and becoming opaque. Today, states Assmann, “the time has passed when governments tried to transform places of trauma … into memorial sites with a heroic symbolic choreography and a political message. As the varnish of official “meanings” cracks, a mass of variegated and often irreconcilable memories appears” (Assmann 2011, p. 314). Memorials, therefore, must always be understood in the context of the conditions under which they were created. Endlich emphasizes that,

“in retrospect—and with the benefit of contemporary historical and art historical insight—we can better grasp the political and social frameworks surrounding a memorial’s creation, as well as the intentions of those who commissioned it, whether private groups or public authorities. Often, memorials are the result of difficult compromises or long, conflictuous processes. Their design reflects the state of memorial art at the time—whether through a return to traditional forms of honoring the dead or through a distinctive artistic process shaped by the broader evolution of visual art. A key to understanding any memorial also lies in considering which aspects of history are highlighted, and which are neglected or deliberately left unspoken.”

(Endlich 2014, p. 63).

Against this background, the Genius Loci festival can be understood as a further intervention in the ongoing reconfiguration of the site: by overlaying the memorial architecture with contemporary artistic projections, it participates in the continuing process through which the space is reinterpreted, reframed, and—albeit in a different register—once again endowed with political and cultural significance.

8. Artistic Intervention and Democratic Memory: The Genius Loci Festival at Buchenwald

In recent years, Buchenwald has once again become a contested site of memory. The rise of the far-right AfD has brought open acts of revisionism—from wreath-laying “for all victims” in 2015, to Björn Höcke’s reference to Berlin’s Holocaust memorial as a “monument of shame,” to efforts at relativizing deaths in the Soviet special camp. (Neumann-Thein 2021, pp. 78–79; Ulrich et al. 2022). Such controversies underscore the ongoing struggle over the meaning of Buchenwald and reveal how remembrance functions as a normatively charged and highly contested field within a democratic society. Against this backdrop, the 2024 edition of the Genius Loci festival deliberately chose the memorial grounds as its stage. By engaging with the site’s politicized layers of memory, the festival did not simply use the space as a backdrop but temporarily reinterpreted and renegotiated it, intertwining artistic intervention with an implicit appeal to civic reflection and public responsibility.7

In the festival booklet, the organizing team chose the motto “It feels like 5 to 33” in reference to the recently published book Es ist 5 vor 33 by author and activist Philipp Ruch (2024).8 This motto draws attention to the current political climate—particularly in light of the upcoming elections in several regions, including the federal state of Thuringia, where the site is located. The organizing committee states in its foreword: “worldwide, shrill populism and complex egoism are on the rise. In light of these current social and political events, Genius Loci Weimar and Thuringia […] are therefore sending an urgent message: not to lose the sight of the past, and even less of the future.” (Genius Loci Weimar Team 2024, p. 6).

The strategic scheduling of the event on the weekend of the election provided visitors with the opportunity to engage with both the festival and the theme of the memorial. The initiative sought to articulate a definitive statement by conducting an examination of the historically significant site, thereby initiating discourse on societal values and human interactions. “Can art reframe places and invite people to visit and reflect?” is one of the central quests of the immersive artistic experience. The monument has shaped the character of the place. With the projections and soundscapes, the artists added another interpretive layer—aiming to render the memorial site visible in new ways through fresh images and sensory impressions, as a newspaper article noted in the aftermath of the festival (Dobenecker 2024). From a broader perspective, memory and political tensions converged in a singular event that attracted media attention from across the Federal Republic of Germany and beyond, especially in light of the upcoming election (Henry 2024).

In an interview I conducted with lead organizer Hendrik Wendler on 12 November 2024, he shared the core ideas behind the festival. He raised two central questions: “How do we want to treat one another? What kind of society do we want to live in?” He added:

“What does a memorial actually mean? What is the purpose of a memorial? Why do people visit memorials? Some people visit them deliberately to come to terms with what happened. Others may be taken there as part of a school project. But a memorial should not just silence people; it should also encourage them to better understand what happened and develop an attitude toward it. It is a place for reflection. The real tragedy would be to ignore this place and leave it to decay.”

(interview with Wendler 2024, November 12).

Performing a festival on a graveyard is a very delicate thing, says Wendler. From the perspective of collective memory, the memory of the place guarantees the presence of the dead. Memorial sites invite visitors to pay visits that have a ritual character and thus have a direct impact on society. This happens when visiting a memorial site is also understood as an act of collective mourning. It is indeed a very specific connection, what Walter Benjamin referred to as the “blood trail of lost ancestors.” Traumatic places, Assmann notes, are marked by a wound that resists healing—and indeed, should not be allowed to fully heal (Assmann 2011, p. 338).

While the intensity of the experience at such a site can endure over time, each generation engages with it differently. The forms of remembrance practiced by earlier generations can no longer be experienced in the same way today—they are historically contingent and must be reinterpreted in order to remain meaningful. As a result, elements of past commemorative practices—such as those embodied in the GDR-era memorial—may later come to seem outdated or no longer appropriate. As Wendler put it:

“This site, in a way, just repeats what happened before. The individual who was crushed by fascist society is again turned into part of a collective—whether through a mass grave or through monumental reconstruction. The aim was really to shift the focus back to the individual.”

(interview with Wendler 2024, November 12).

The participating artist groups who designed the three projections—on the stelae, the Street of Nations, and the tower—developed a distinct narrative approach that addressed visitors on a personal level. In this way, the festival inverted the former ritual forms that had combined Christian and socialist codes within the memorial’s symbolic program. At the same time, the artistic intervention engaged with present political conflicts, which increasingly revolve around competing conceptions of social order. Far-right movements seek to challenge democratic governance by promoting normative models grounded in conservative or authoritarian ideologies. These constructions of order are typically positioned against liberal and pluralist frameworks that emphasize egalitarianism, diversity, and cosmopolitan orientations. (Mudde 2019; Ulrich et al. 2022). In this way, the festival not only reinterpreted the memorial’s symbolic legacy but also positioned the site as a contemporary arena in which competing visions of social order and democratic coexistence are critically reflected.

The first of the selected artists was the group mammasONica, which curated the projection on the stelae and the respective soundscape. Their entry point was through striking visuals and sharp, jarring soundscapes. The narrative was intentionally intense, with extremely aggressive, almost horrifying noises that evoked a visceral sense of dread.

The group Area Composer reimagined the monumental Street of Nations as a path of human fate. Photographs were projected onto objects, creating immersive visual and acoustic effects. As visitors moved along the street, they entered a sound space in which the sensory input gradually diminished—allowing them to internalize the historical narrative on a more reflective level.

German-French animation artist Marina Konther transformed Rilke’s poem “The Silence” into an animation that juxtaposes the noise of war with the deep, human stillness evoked in the poem. Her poetic and childlike imagery stands in contrast to the monumental architecture of the tower, emphasizing the individuality of those crushed beneath the wheels of history. In this way, her work shifts the focus from ideological narrative to a more universal register of suffering that resonates beyond the specific historical context of the site.

This artistic intervention by the festival temporarily reconfigured the existing GDR memorial site into a space for reflection on societies’ paradigms of equality and individual expression. At the same time, it implicitly engages with critical issues raised in recent debates about German remembrance of the Nazi era in general. For instance, Messerschmidt critiques the use of unsettling memorial sites as tools for “self-affirmation.” (Messerschmidt 2015, p. 39). Since visits to memorial sites have become a widespread part of the educational programs in German schools since the late 20th century, critical voices have begun to emerge, questioning an overly historicizing and musealized approach to these visits.

“The relegation of the past to something ‘laid to rest,’ ‘overcome,’ or ‘finished’ creates a harmonized view of a society that is, in fact, increasingly unstable—a society still marked today by distinctions, racism, ideologies of inequality, and the dynamics of structural injustice. These distortions may appear almost ‘resolved’ in the context of a memorial visit that confronts the horrors of the past at an allegedly authentic site.”

(Behrens and Hoffstadt 2021, p. 55).

In the context of ritualized school visits—often situated between historical observation and a staged form of collective mourning—the intended impact of these visits seems to be diminishing. Simply moving through the memorial site, which is often imbued with a powerful aura, is frequently viewed as meaningful in itself. This experience is commonly framed as a transformative moment, metaphorically described as a form of “vaccination” or “immunization” against anti-democratic tendencies. (Behrens and Hoffstadt 2021, p. 57) However, as Volkhard Knigge, former director of the Buchenwald Memorial (1994–2020), has cautioned, such assumptions must be critically examined. Memorial sites are often, consciously or unconsciously, placed in the service of remembrance—a concept that is “increasingly used as a morally charged, rather vague formula of pathos, as if remembrance in itself were already the ideal path to fostering critical historical awareness, as if the act of remembering alone constituted successful education in democracy and human rights.” (Knigge 2010, p. 10). Wendler argues similarly:

“From an artistic perspective, there is a tendency to approach things in more general, abstract terms. It’s not just about the specific events the memorial commemorates, but about the underlying history—the deeper narratives of systems that spun out of control. Our work aims to uncover what has been lost and highlight what is still worth preserving. A project like the Genius Loci gives the site a renewed character, transforming it into a space of public engagement. These places must not be turned into static museums—if they are, they lose their vitality. The traditional ways of conveying history at this location have their limits and have already begun to show signs of fatigue.”

(interview with Wendler 2024, November 12).

A constructive approach could be to connect memorial visits to contemporary societal debates and provide visitors with stimuli to reflect on their own system of values. In this context, Wendler explains that the festival edition is a response to the rise of right-wing populism and its interpretation of history, which does not spare memorial sites. The square in front of the tower was once used as a parade ground for socialist speeches, often delivered with strong moral force. In contrast, Wendler emphasizes, “we wanted to convey the opposite—that people pause and reflect on their own lives, and that we have the freedom to do so.”

The timing of the festival was no coincidence; it took place deliberately on the weekend of the elections. Over three days, visitors could engage with both the memorial and the festival. “Our goal,” Wendler concludes, “is to make a clear statement by casting new light on this historically burdened place.” (interview with Wendler 2024, November 12).

The 2024 Genius Loci festival thus functioned as a contemporary layer within the evolving memorial landscape, reactivating the site’s spatial and symbolic structures and repositioning it as a forum in which historical memory, present political tensions, and competing visions of democratic responsibility intersect and are renegotiated.

9. Conclusions

This article has shown that Buchenwald is not only a site where the past is represented but also a space where social order is repeatedly staged, contested, and redefined through practices of remembrance. In the GDR, the memorial’s architectural program translated antifascist ideology into a directed spatial narrative and a ritualized experience that drew on culturally familiar Christian motifs while subordinating historical complexity to a teleological political script. After 1990, this framework fractured: previously marginalized victim groups and the history of Special Camp No. 2 entered the public narrative, while disputes over commemoration exposed enduring hierarchies of grievability and competing claims to historical meaning. Against this background, the 2024 Genius Loci festival can be understood as a contemporary intervention in the memorial’s symbolic economy. At the site of the former concentration camp, lines of political conflict converge, as democratic actors articulate concerns about the erosion of democratic institutions and the rise of radical movements invoking historical resonances with the Nazi era. That this confrontation unfolded in Weimar—a city of exceptional symbolic weight in German history (Merseburger 2000)—further underscores the event’s broader cultural and political significance.

By overlaying the monumental architecture with projections and soundscapes, the festival reactivated the site’s affective and ritual dynamics and redirected them toward individualized perception, civic reflection, and the negotiation of democratic responsibility under current political pressures. At the same time, the memorial remains open to further reinterpretations. For several years, for example, an annual Via Crucis commemorating the murder of Pastor Paul Schneider (1897–1939) in Buchenwald was held at the site, demonstrating how explicitly Christian ritual practices continued to intersect with its political and commemorative functions (Geiger 2007, p. 82). The case thus illustrates how religiously shaped forms and repertoires remain operative in public culture—not as residual belief, but as symbolic and performative resources through which memory, conflict, and collective orientation are organized in contemporary society.