Wissenschaft in Verantwortung, Berlin, Germany
Charite GeDenkOrt
Sculptures for Charité Hospital Campus “GeDenkOrt” in Berlin.
The sculpture tour shall critically recall the Charité Hospital’s history during the Nazi regime and Communism. The focus is on the interaction of the viewer with the sculptures. On the one hand, the border crossings and crimes against humanity at that time were to be made experienceable, on the other hand the transfer into one’s own experience
– the viewer is tempted to become the actor – be facilitated.
In this way the memory becomes alive in a double sense.
The “interventions” (sculptures) illustrate the borderline crossings in various areas of medical research and practice during the period of national socialism, from human action in the interests of the sick person to inhumane action in the interest of society.
They invite the observer to become active on this border, to feel the power of medicine through human beings, and to experience or take responsibility for one’s own actions: Do I pull on the band around the pregnant women’s belly? Do I accept the invitation of the leper and sit next to him? Do I impose coercion on the mentally ill? In the best case, this interaction stimulates the viewer (or interactive visitor) to the reexion about currently possible medical borderlines. Where medicine today threatens to abolish its own goal of caring for the sick, in research and practice?
Project: Competition
Design Team: Andreas Vogler, Sylwia Pawlowska
Consulting: Prof. Dr. med. Georg Marckmann, MPH, Vorstand Institut für Ethik, Geschichte und Theorie der Medizin
Mathias Schütz, M.A., Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter, Institut für Ethik, Geschichte und Theorie der Medizin