Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. Religious Memorials

PD Dr. Kai Kappel, art and architecture historian. Privatdozent (university lecturer) at Mainz University , currently lecturing at Humboldt University Berlin, Technical University Berlin and Dresden University

Dachau, set up in March 1933 as one of the first permanent concentration camps, is still today a synonym for the inhuman National Socialist machinery of oppression, "a precinct whose soil burns us through the soles of our shoes, even if we have never set foot on it" (Ulrich Conrads). Shortly after liberation there were already plans to contain the concentration camp site in a Christian framework by the use of the symbol of the cross and the addition of church buildings. Between 1960 and 1967, in the context of the establishment of the Concentration Camp Memorial Site, "places of meditation" were created at the north of the site: the Catholic Mortal Agony of Christ Chapel, the Jewish Memorial and the internationally famous Protestant Church of Reconciliation. These were joined by the Carmelite Convent of the Precious Blood and the Russian Orthodox chapel. The religious places of remembrance in the Dachau camp testify to a turning point in society and to the earnest intention to commemorate the victims of National Socialism. Its complex architectural history and its works of art are presented together for the first time in this richly illustrated publication.