The Square Of The Invisible Monument, Memorial square in Saarbrücken, Germany
The Square of the Invisible Monument is a memorial plaza in front of Saarbrücken Castle, with its surface made up of 2146 paving stones. Each stone has the name of a destroyed Jewish cemetery engraved on its underside.
Between 1990 and 1993, stones were secretly removed and engraved by art professor Jochen Gerz and students with names of cemeteries that had been erased during Nazi rule. This gradual project turned the public square into a distributed memorial of destruction.
The memorial carries names of Jewish cemeteries destroyed during Nazi rule, connecting the history of this place with an act of remembrance. The way the names are hidden encourages visitors to consciously think about what lies beneath the surface.
The square is located near the former Gestapo headquarters in central Saarbrücken and is easily accessible on foot. Since the inscriptions are placed on the underside of the stones, you can only see them by lifting and turning over individual stones.
The project requires physical participation: visitors must lift the stones to discover the hidden names, actively reversing the act of forgetting. This action turns remembrance into a personal experience rather than passive observation.
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