Rathausausstellung 2026 - Tafel 21: NS-Kultur in Stein gemeisselt | Town-hall Exhibition 2026 - Panel 21: Nazi culture carved in stone

Monuments between Heimatkunst and ‘a hero’s death’ As of 1933, numerous monuments in Hamburg fell victim to the iconoclasm of the Nazi regime. Among the monuments destroyed were that to the Jewish writer Heinrich Heine and a relief by the pacifist Ernst Barlach. The Hamburg Senate, for its part, commissioned monuments that glorified National Socialism, warfare, and soldiers. The war memorial on Dammtordamm, for instance, was erected in 1936, with the inscription ‘Germany must live, even if we must die’. Other monuments glorified German colonial rule. New buildings were adorned with swastikas or sculptures referencing the notion of Heimat [homeland] and Volkstum [folk-dom], thereby inscribing National Socialist content and symbolism into the urban landscape.