Discovering Nazi Relics…
In July of 2019, enjoying a two-week vacation, I arrived with my girlfriend in the Baltic port city of Gdańsk, Poland, for a three-night stay. Over the next few days, we visited the markets of the Długi Targ, restaurants along the Motława river, and Poland’s National Museum of the Second World War. On our final day, we walked through the famous St Dominic’s Fair, an annual open-air market held since 1260. Looking through the multitude of tents, tables, and blankets arrayed with every conceivable item from antique light fixtures to used DVDs, I came across a merchant who dealt primarily in military items. After expressing passive interest in some portrait photographs of German soldiers, the dealer brought me to a cardboard box of items he claimed were recently discovered during the clearing of an old German house. As I followed him and listened, my thoughts mostly regretted having fallen into what seemed like a trap. Now, I had little choice but to purchase something or spend an indeterminate amount of time talking with this man. To my surprise, however, the contents of the box proved more interesting than the photographs he lured me from. Examining its contents, I realized it amounted to a comprehensive set of belongings to a German infantry officer from the Second World War including medals, captured Soviet maps, shrapnel-punctured field equipment, and forty-seven watercolor paintings bound into a small book. After some brief haggling, we agreed on a price, I carefully packed everything in my carry-on, and proceeded to the train station with my mercifully patient girlfriend.
But what would I do with these things? More generally, was there anything unethical or immoral about this man openly profiting from Nazi artifacts? Having contributed to his profit, was I now implicated in some sort of moral transgression? Admittedly, at the time I bought them, I was more preoccupied with their potential research value. As time passed, however, I became increasingly curious about the ethics surrounding the sale and trade of these relics. This led me to discover a contentious cultural debate that serves to frame the leading question of this project: Do Nazi artifacts have inherent historical value? If so, what place do they have in contemporary society? The articles below provide a small sample of the disagreement and emotion stirred by these objects in recent years. Click to read them in full.
In a New York Times opinion piece from November, 2023, journalist Menachem Kaiser addresses the “thriving trade in Nazi mementos” in an article titled “What Kind of Person Has a Closet Full of Nazi Memorabilia?” He concludes that the market for Nazi objects cannot keep itself from sanitizing Nazi crimes, determining it best to keep these items in the “public custodianship” meaning “museums and archives [who] can preserve and make accessible even the ghastliest material history.”[1] Museums, however, have their own issues in accepting, displaying, and storing such a vast amount of material. From December 2021 through January 2023, the House of Austrian History in Vienna (Haus der Geschichte Österreich or HdGÖ) ran an exhibition titled “Disposing of Hitler: Out of the Cellar, into the Museum” (Hitler Entsorgen: Vom Keller ins Museum).[2] Addressing the numerous donations of Nazi-era relics the museum receives annually, the exhibit challenged visitors to decide whether they would “destroy, preserve, or sell” these objects if discovered. Additionally, the exhibit aimed to “respond to the problem of how to deal with the charged nature of Nazi objects by not imbuing them with any additional aura.” Forgoing preservation altogether, some have taken a more radical approach to the issue. In 2018, Berlin based artist Yoshinori Niwa organized a program in Graz, Austria, titled “Withdrawing Adolf Hitler from a Private Space” which provided city residents with public donation boxes to dispose of “offending National Socialist memorabilia” for it to be “destroyed under official supervision.”[3] The popularity of the program led to a tour of Germany from 2020 through 2021. While the challenges posed by the ownership of Nazi artifacts are not new, disagreement on how to meet those challenges appears to be increasing. Nearly eight decades after Germany’s defeat, how is society still grappling with what to do with Nazi artifacts?
Case Study: Fritz Sievers
Given the heated debate surrounding these relics, can the group I purchased in Poland contribute to this discussion? What, if anything, do Sievers’ items reveal about the era in which they were used and the man who used them? At their basest level, they tell the story of Fritz Sievers, born 22 September 1919 in Hannover, who served as a Lieutenant in the 111th Infantry Division (ID) from 1942 to 1944. He was twice decorated for bravery as well as twice wounded in combat, the second wound leading to his evacuation to Germany. As the 111th ID was subsequently annihilated in May 1944 during the Soviet offensive to liberate Crimea, this second wound likely saved his life. While these details provide general context, they are still essentially shallow aspects of his war experience, easily pieced together by the items he left behind. Rather than construct a simple military record of Sievers’ life, it was the wider historiographical questions provoked by these things that led me on a search to determine how they fit into their own time and place and, thereby, attempt to understand the material existence of one German officer’s military service.
[1] Menachem Kaiser, “What Kind of Person Has a Closet Full of Nazi Memorabilia?,” The New York Times, September 29, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/29/opinion/nazi-memorabilia-market-liveauctioneers.html.
[2] Gabu Heindl, “Gabu Heindl Architecture,” Disposing of Hitler: Out of the Cellar, Into the Museum – GABU Heindl Architektur, accessed December 3, 2023, https://www.gabuheindl.at/en/overview/political-history/disposing-of-hitler-out-of-the-cellar-into-the-museum.html.
[3] “Withdrawing Adolf Hitler from a Private Space, 2020–21,” Withdrawing Adolf Hitler from a private space – yoshinori niwa, accessed December 3, 2023, https://yoshinoriniwa.com/works/74.