Libeskind on Trauma

When Daniel Libeskind was chosen as the architect for the Jüdisches Museum Berlin / Jewish Museum Berlin, he needed to reexamine his thoughts on the trauma that is the legacy of the Holocaust. In an essay from the book Image and Remembrance, edited by Shelley Hornstein and Florence Jacobowitz, he discusses the ways he has approached his own depictions of trauma in various memorial spaces. For my purposes, I'll look at his comments on his various dilemmas in designing the addition to the Kollegienhaus, a former courthouse, built in the 18th century, to create a new museum dedicated to Jewish history in Berlin.

Kollegienhaus

Libeskind describes some of his thoughts concerning the design and building of the museum, which opened in its new form in 2001. One of the most important questions for him involved ways to portray the changes based on absences in Berlin and in the world because of the Holocaust. Very few Jews were left in Berlin after the Holocaust. Yet, before the Nazi regime they had been active contributors to life and culture in the city. Libeskind decides to use architectural voids throughout the museum to explore that sense of physical and cultural absence that came from the deportations and exterminations. “The void embodies the literal annihilation of culture, the annihilation of the carriers of culture” (Libeskind 46).

One of the voids in the museum

To depict the presence of the Jews in pre-Nazi Berlin as social and intrinsic, he takes a look at lines of connections concerning Jews. Generally this comes about in a symbolic form. Libeskind uses what he considers an irrational star matrix as the shape of the addition to the older building.  He bases this shape on complicated geometric formulas derived from street addresses and events through time “as one looks from one place to another, across [Berlin’s] housing projects, across historical events, across the empty sites of Berlin” (53). The intent of using the star shape is also to reference the yellow star Jews were forced to wear during the 3rd Reich. Libeskind explains, “Through the categories or dimensions of architectural thinking I drew the irrational star matrix that connected Germans, Berliners, and Jews across the absence of light…I took the complexity of this matrix as part of the light that comes into the museum, the light that cuts through the windows which are not regular windows, not just holes that bring light to the collection, but rather lights that fall from deep lines of intermarriage and lines of destiny which are irretrievable” (52-53).

 Addition derived from star-shape

Light cutting through windows

Libeskind understands, as any artist does, that a work of art must be the thing, even more than to represent something. To enter into the space of trauma, the visitor to the museum must be in engaged with the trauma, “be in it” (45).  Libeskind captures this sense of trauma by putting the visitor’s body and psyche into the trauma itself. He does that by disrupting perceptions. In the Garden of Exile, he tilts the plane on which people walk. No one can be sure of where to put their feet.

Garden of Exile (exterior)

Garden of Exile from inside

 At the center of the design of the building there are three axes that cut through the spaces of the museum.

One of the design axes

One of these leads to the Holocaust Tower, which is a space in the museum that dead ends. Within, there is a sense of claustrophobia, of peril, of being unable to connect with life outside the tower. Throughout, the architect creates a “state of instability, of disconnection/connection, of disorder/order will be understood intellectually and kinetically. I always remember the words of St. Augustine in The City of God: ‘Everyone is permanently leaving Babel, but some are leaving with their ankles and feet, and others are leaving with their hearts and souls’” (58).

Holocaust Tower, window view

 Holocaust Tower, floor level

The intent with all of these depictions of trauma is for the visitor to come to an understanding of the Holocaust that cannot be captured in a more typical memorial space. By causing a sense of trauma to the visitor, Libeskind helps extend the larger dialogue concerning the Holocaust and its effects.  Instead of freezing the memorial space, he brings it alive.  Each visitor interacts with the space and brings new meaning to that interaction.

In this blog entry I am discussing physical manifestations of trauma for the visitor. In another, I’ll explore Libeskind’s use of the uncanny as it affects the psychological and emotional states of the person exploring the museum.