Art and memory
Remembering in Dialogue. Vlado Martek in Berlin and Patricia Pisani in Zagreb
Dotrščina, Zagreb's most important memorial site, is artistically and culturally linked to memorial sites of a similar nature and status: the first exchange is with the Murellenberg Memorial in Berlin, near the Olympic Stadium. Both European cities now have idyllic park forests on the outskirts, which served as mass execution sites during the Second World War. For a long time, the history of these places was forgotten.
The idea for the dialogue came from Saša Šimpraga, the initiator of the Virtual Museum of Dotrščina in Zagreb, with the support of the Goethe-Institut there and other partners. The respective artists had already intervened at the other location.
Helen Adkins
Kunsthistorikerin und freie Kuratorin
The memorial can be found online under ‘Memorial to the former Wehrmacht execution site Ruhleben Murellenberg’. The entrance to the memorial is located directly next to the Waldbühne.
Dotrščina Memorial Park, Zagreb
Dotrščina is the site of the largest mass murder in Zagreb's history. During the Second World War, over 7,000 citizens, anti-fascists, Serbs, Jews and other victims were killed there by the Ustasha regime, which was allied with Nazi Germany. In 1968, a memorial park with sculptures was created in Dotrščina. With the collapse of Yugoslavia and the change in political system, Dotrščina was removed from official remembrance policy in the early 1990s. In the 1990s, there were even attempts to attribute the murders committed by the Ustasha regime to the partisans. The aim of the Dotrščina Virtual Museum, established in 2012, is to convey the values of humanity.
Murellenberg Memorial, Berlin
The Nazi regime set up a firing squad site at Murellenberg for deserters and so-called ‘Wehrkraftzersetzer’ (those who undermined military morale). According to current knowledge, at least 232 people, mainly members of the Wehrmacht, were executed on this site between 12 August 1944 and 14 April 1945[1]. The exact location of the executions has not yet been determined. It was not until 2009 that all convictions by Nazi military courts for ‘treason’ were overturned in Germany. Of the estimated 200,000 active participants in the Nazi regime's murder of millions of civilians, only about 7,000 were prosecuted.
The memorial consists of an idyllic forest path, just under a kilometre long, which begins with a steep stone staircase, winds its way up the hill and finally leads to the edge of a hidden gorge. In 2002, the Berlin-based Argentinian artist Patricia Pisani created the installation ‘Denkzeichen’ (Memorial) there to commemorate the victims.
Action and Intervention
The action by Croatian artist Vlado Martek, "Empowered to Idealism. The greatest victory is the victory of art,‘ took place on 8 June 2024 as part of the “Šumaljudi” (’Forest of People") project on Murellenberg. It consisted of discreet installations that could be explored along the path by a group of people accompanied by Martek. After returning to the starting point, nothing remained to be seen of the intervention.
In return, Patricia Pisani realised the artistic work ‘TRANSITION’ in the Dotrščina Memorial Park on 21 September 2024, World Peace Day. Her temporary intervention consisted of three zebra crossings applied with chalk across the paved paths. A year later, traces of the markings are still visible.
The artistic beginnings of Vlado Martek (*1951, Zagreb), literary scholar and philosopher, date back to the 1970s. The violent changes of power in Central Europe, with shifting borders and intertwined cultural circles, contradict any concept of permanence. This background is essential to Martek's message.
He describes the path on Murellenberg as ‘a typical route of life’. His object poems are written on cellophane foil and consist of unsettling instructions and words of wisdom that blend in with nature. These are complemented by arrangements of pencils, blank A4 sheets of paper and Berlin picture postcards, as well as collections of pencil sharpeners and erasers. The ‘tools’ for a potential verbal message stand as metaphors for erasure and correction.
At the beginning of the forest walk, Martek asks us in writing to read poems by Else Lasker-Schüler, a poet of love. However, he does not expect his request to be followed. Rather, it is a matter of highlighting the contradictions of an instruction.
A little further on, gathered around a tree, many small red pencils stand upright in the ground. They symbolise a return to the wood from which they originate and suggest the cycle of life. Pencils wrapped in cellophane are symbolic: the barely visible black ones represent the ‘persistent devil’, the creeping fascism that can be unwrapped at any time. The red ones are a little more recognisable and allude to life and renewal. Wrapped white pencils lie separately.
Closeness to nature is essential for Vlado Martek. He speaks of the sublimation of thoughts, i.e. refinement and dissolution. Accordingly, on the way back to the starting point, all the objects used are carefully collected again.
Patricia Pisani (born 1958, Buenos Aires), sculptor and art teacher, has lived and worked in Germany since 1990. As a young woman, she experienced the atrocities of the military dictatorship in Argentina. The political culture of her native country was marked by violence, repression, torture and persecution.
Pisani's context-related art projects often serve the culture of remembrance. Topics include the excesses of state terrorism, murders and arrests under the Nazi dictatorship, reformatories, deportations, euthanasia, but also the prisons and border installations of the former GDR, racism and displacement. Pisani likes to use universally understandable visual ‘vocabulary’ such as red and white striped barrier tape. Striking elements of road traffic regulations such as traffic lights, mirrors and zebra crossings are also part of her working tools, which she conceptually integrates into her works.
In the permanent installation ‘Denkzeichen’ (Memorial) on Murellenberg, where nature now dominates, she uses traffic mirrors. For forest lovers, this is a significant irritation that draws attention to a foreign object. According to Pisani, the traffic mirrors are intended to ‘prevent danger by making something visible that is outside the field of vision.’
In a conversation at the start of the ‘TRANSITION’ intervention in Dotrščina, Pisani emphasised the universality of difficult historical legacies. Her pedestrian crossings, each with six white stripes and designed to a modified scale, cross paved park paths and extend into the forest on either side. The strict arrangement of the markings contrasts visually with the idyllic park. What are crossings doing on a park path where there are neither intersections nor traffic? It is a call to pay attention and a questioning of legal systems.[9] Pedestrians are encouraged to pause and take a closer look. Perhaps this is where the souls of the murdered cross paths with the living.
‘TRANSITION’ acts as a brief wake-up call to the memory of a shameful history. As with ‘Šumaljudi’, the content of the intervention is metaphorically supported by a minimalist aesthetic. Terrible injustices, invisible today, took place in these places. The quiet installations are poetic invitations to reflect on fundamental questions.
Especially in view of the current world situation, in which fascism is gaining strength globally, it is more necessary than ever to remember the resistance fighters murdered by German National Socialism and the Quisling-Ustasha regime. People who had the courage not to bow to dictatorships must not have died in vain.