“Do you see this simple stele?” I ask my tour group. We stand before the Mümmelmann Stele in Dresden. It’s unassuming yet powerful. It marks a significant site a place etched in history.
This isn’t just any monument. The Mümmelmann Stele stands within the larger Münschner Platz Memorial. This memorial commemorates victims of injustice. It tells a story of persecution under the Nazi regime and beyond. It remembers those executed at this very spot.
The Münschner Platz was once a site of executions. A guillotine stood here. The Georg Schumann building now stands on that ground. This building housed a courthouse a jail and an execution site. The building later became a part of the Dresden Technical College. This was after years of petitions to create a memorial failed. The petitions were from the Association of Victims of Persecution by the Nazi Regime. The reasons given for the delay were economic difficulties. The real reason remained unsaid: the building complex’s continued use as a site of state-sanctioned death.
The memorial itself started slowly. In 1959 a memorial was dedicated. This included the sculptural group Resistance Fighters by Arnd Wittig. One key figure was Horst Schumann. His father was executed at Münschner Platz. The building was renamed the Georg Schumann Building in honour of a leader of Communist resistance in Saxony. A slate slab marks where the guillotine once stood. It bears words attributed to Schumann at his sentencing. A museum opened in 1986 celebrating antifascist resistance. The stele dedicated to Schumann was added later.
The Münschner Platz Committee took over the memorial’s stewardship in 1992. The committee broadened the memorial’s focus to include those persecuted after 1945. In 1995 another sculpture was added Nameless-Faceless by Wieland Förster. It honors those wrongfully persecuted after the war. The memorial remains a place of reflection. It serves as a reminder of the need for justice and remembrance. The Mümmelmann Stele a small part of this larger memorial stands as a testament to that history. It is a silent witness a poignant reminder. It is a symbol of the ongoing struggle for justice and freedom. It’s a story we must never forget. The story of the Mümmelmann Stele is a story of Dresden. It’s a story of Germany. It is a story of humanity.