For One Far-Right Politician, Forgetting Germany’s Past Just Got Harder (original) (raw)
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A political art group built a replica of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial in Bornhagen, Germany. Next door is the home of Björn Höcke, a far-right politician who called the memorial “a monument of shame.”Credit...Gordon Welters for The New York Times
- Dec. 25, 2017
BORNHAGEN, Germany — No one in the village saw it coming, least of all Björn Höcke, a quiet and well-liked local father of four who also happens to be Germany’s most notorious far-right politician.
Last January, at a rally in Dresden, Mr. Höcke questioned the guiding precept of modern Germany — the country’s culpability in World War II and the Holocaust — calling on Germans to make a “180 degree” turn in the way they viewed their history.
Germans were “the only people in the world to plant a monument of shame in the heart of their capital,” he said, referring to the Holocaust memorial in Berlin.
And then, one recent Wednesday morning, Mr. Höcke woke up in his rural home to find the Holocaust memorial outside his bedroom window: 24 rectangular concrete slabs, one section of the original monument, rebuilt to scale on the property immediately neighboring his.
The only difference: The slabs had been rotated 180 degrees.
“We wanted to remind Mr. Höcke that he can turn German history however much he likes, it doesn’t change,” said Philipp Ruch, co-founder of a Berlin-based artist collective known as the Center for Political Beauty and, at least on paper, Mr. Höcke’s new neighbor.
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Mr. Höcke, right, in January. He called on Germans to make a “180 degree” turn in the way they viewed their history.Credit...Carsten Koall/European Pressphoto Agency
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