03/29/2023 Exhibition

WHY HERE? History and commemoration at Lohsepark

From 22 April to 15 July 2023 a two-part installation will be providing insights into the history of the location.

The ‘denk.mal Hannoverscher Bahnhof’ memorial site has been located at Lohsepark since 2017. But where exactly was the Hannoverscher Bahnhof railway station situated, and why was it used to dispatch deportation trains as of 1940? And how was it able to disappear from public consciousness after 1945?

A two-part installation will provide insights into the history of the site. Various historical illustrations will enable visitors to retrace its development from 1872 through to the present.

The Info Pavilion on Lohseplatz

A selection of eleven historical motifs featuring the railway station right up to the end of the war in 1945 is to be displayed here. Each of these handy panels, approx. 30 x 40 cm in size, comprises one motif, placing it within in its historical context and situating it within its historical and contemporary topography. Built in 1872 as the terminus for a newly planned railway line across the Elbe to the Ruhr area, the railway station lost its status as major passenger station after only 30 years, following the inauguration of Hamburg’s Central Station in 1907. It subsequently became a hub for freight traffic and special trains for emigrant groups, day-trippers and, later on, soldiers, the wounded, and military ordnance. It was from here that, from the mid-1930s onwards, Hamburg citizens were also transported to concentration camps throughout the Reich territory. From 1940, Jews, Sinti and Roma were deported from Hannoverscher Bahnhof to ghettos and concentration camps in German-occupied eastern Europe.

En route to the ‘denk.mal Hannoverscher Bahnhof’ memorial site
Further motifs are to be exhibited in large format in a gallery at the Fuge [Swathe]. The six photo banners are 2 x 3 m in size and show the demise of the station buildings, the various uses to which the area was subsequently put by logistics companies among others, and the gradual dereliction of the historical remains. Very little was left of the original railway infrastructure. When the Lohsepark was built, sections of the railway tracks and remains of the former Platform 2 were placed under a preservation order and, in 2017, a memorial site was inaugurated there.

The two-part installation offers an insight into the story of the site’s history, which is to be set out in the upcoming documentation centre ‘denk.mal Hannoverscher Bahnhof’ as of 2026.

The exhibition curated by Mia Gressmann, Cornelia Siebeck and Stefan Wilbricht (Foundation of Hamburg Memorials and Learning Centres) will be on display from 22 April to 15 July 2023.

The installation is by the Foundation of Hamburg Memorials and Learning Centres Commemorating the Victims of Nazi Crimes, in co-operation with HafenCity Hamburg GmbH.

The installation at the Info Pavilion on Lohseplatz can be visited during Pavilion opening hours (daily 12 noon to 6 pm); the installation at the memorial site itself, at any time.