What does it feel like to be bombed? A Hamburg museum approaches this question carefully.
Experiences of bombing are not just a sensitive issue in a country which started a war; they are difficult to convey in a museum. It’s in the nature of bombing that it destroys objects and buildings, whereas a museum conserves and restores. Besides, bombing threatens human life in a way that makes mere objects appear trivial. Nevertheless, for as long as people are alive in a bombing raid they engage with the object world, and the Mahnmal St Nikolai captures some of the connections between objects and emotional responses in the section ‘Personal Memories’.
Some British visitors will have only a vague idea that jars like this have something to do with jam-making. In Germany, where preserving fruit and vegetables for the winter has a stronger tradition, this is still a familiar object, known as a ‘Weck jar’ after its manufacturer.
A man who was nine at the time of the biggest raid on Hamburg recalls being trapped in the cellars of burning houses. In one they found jars of preserves and drank the liquid, also pouring it over their heads to cool themselves.
Clearly this is not one of the original jars and it is rare for a museum to use a ‘prop’ in this way. The jar reminds us how an ordinary object might prompt the recall of traumatic memories but also how fragile survival is in a bombing raid, dependent on chance resources.
German History Museums 