Hanau, Halle, and Hoyerswerda have become symbols of injustice, suffering, and rightwing terror. The streets and squares of these cities continue to bear traces of violence. While for some they are sites of fear, others bypass them as way stations of everyday life, heading to work, to visit friends, or to shop. Occasional flowers draw attention to the events of the past, though sometimes the past remains invisible and is tangible only to contemporary witnesses. Not all of these sites, however, remain trapped in experiences of violence. Some have become places of remembrance, returning to a vitality that was once brutally interrupted. 

Memory is not automatic. It needs voices that speak, structures that listen, and sites that preserve space. Only in this way can memory remain alive—not as a ritual, but as a political practice. Memory is and remains contested. Monuments emerge as attempts to create sites of memory even when direct traces of violence no longer exist. Such sites become venues for resistance—against fear, for life. But these sites are also always places of negotiation reflecting society’s confrontation with violent histories that continue to bear national significance.

The Initiative 19. Februar Hanau will hold a discussion with Asal Dardan and Mirjam Zadoff on the tensions between remembrance and forgetting, between everyday life and trauma.