Heidenau Bars New Stolpersteine From Public Streets

Heidenau’s city council voted on September 24 to reject all future Stolpersteine in public streets and sidewalks, reversing its own record of approving Gunter Demnig’s decentralized memorial art. The decision leaves five existing stones in place, but it blocks the pending public-pavement additions before the city has a settled design, site, budget, or necessary consent for the central memorial proposed alongside the exclusion.

 
 

Heidenau Reversed Its Own Stolperstein Policy

Thirteen council members supported the measure in a secret ballot, six opposed it, and one abstained, according to MDR Sachsen. The resolution was jointly advanced by local representatives of the AfD, CDU, and Bürgerinitiative Oberelbe. Saxony’s state CDU leadership subsequently rejected the blanket exclusion, underscoring a split between the party’s local votes and its state position.

The adopted language is narrower than a citywide prohibition. It says that laying so-called Stolpersteine in public street and sidewalk areas “will henceforth be rejected.” Mayor Conny Oertel told MDR that the five stones already installed at two locations will remain. The text does not prevent a stone on private property.

The same measure calls for a central memorial area for victims of war, terror, dictatorships, displacement, and especially National Socialism, “preferably” at Heidenau’s North Cemetery. But the city administration’s own assessment, dated August 28, recommended rejecting the proposal. It argued that a cemetery memorial could supplement, but not equally replace, commemoration at victims’ former homes and workplaces.

 

From a 2019 Approval to a 2026 Exclusion

The reversal is visible in the city’s permanent record. On December 19, 2019, the council approved a Stolperstein for former mayor Paul Gröger by 15 votes to four, with two abstentions. The record also shows that councilors debated the same objection heard in 2026—that people would walk over a victim’s name—and rejected an amendment favoring a plaque.

The 2026 administrative paper says Gröger’s stone was installed in 2021. It records a second council approval in 2021 and Stolpersteine for the Jewish Reiner family installed in 2023. This is not a city encountering Demnig’s project for the first time; it is a municipality ending a practice it had authorized twice.

 

The Pending Stone Count Is Not Settled

The official paper says the Alternative Cultural and Educational Center, known as AKuBiZ, applied in 2025 for seven additional stones and that the request was returned to the administration for further work that November. MDR, however, reported on September 26 that AKuBiZ described its proposal as 12 stones for seven Jewish families and individuals. The records may refer to different stages of an expanded application, but neither source explains the discrepancy. The number of memorials directly stopped by the new policy is therefore not yet established.

 

The Stolperstein for Paul Gröger at Dresdner Straße 47 in Heidenau. Photograph by Dr. Bernd Gross, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0; cropped.

 
 

Why Moving the Memorial Changes the Artwork

A Stolperstein is a hand-inscribed brass plate set into a concrete block, normally placed at a person’s last freely chosen home or workplace. That address is not incidental display space. The city’s own analysis calls the location-based, biographical connection the project’s defining feature: a name returns to the ordinary pavement where that person once had a life.

That site-specific logic also distinguishes the stones within the broader history of Holocaust art. A central monument asks people to visit a designated place of memory. Demnig’s work instead interrupts an everyday route. Heidenau’s resolution regulates more than an object’s material or maintenance; it removes the public sidewalk from all future iterations of the artwork.

The project’s scale is clear, but its current totals are not. The foundation’s public facts page lists 116,000 stones in more than 1,860 municipalities across 31 European countries. MDR attributed higher figures to the foundation—more than 128,000 stones and roughly 3,200 municipalities—while the Associated Press reported 126,000 stones in May. The figures also use different measures: the foundation’s public page counts municipalities with stones, while MDR says the foundation works with around 3,200 municipalities. The securely supported point is that Heidenau is restricting one local part of a transnational, decentralized artwork; 128,000 should not be presented as an uncontested current count.

 
 

Munich’s Alternative Is Not a Ready-Made Model

The city administration’s assessment cited Munich, where Stolpersteine are not permitted on public ground. The comparison establishes that another policy exists, but it does not supply Heidenau with a completed replacement.

Munich’s official Erinnerungszeichen program installs gilded wall plaques and freestanding steles at former homes, workplaces, and death sites. It preserves individualized biographies and their connection to the urban locations where victims lived. The city has administered that system through its archive since the first markers were installed in 2018.

Heidenau’s resolution does not specify equivalent address-based markers. Its preferred cemetery is owned by an Evangelical Lutheran parish, so church consent is required. The cemetery is also a protected cultural monument, meaning alterations require heritage review. The administration found no firm design, defined historical scope, financing plan, or maintenance budget. A central memorial has been authorized as a goal, but its location and form remain provisional.

Gunter Demnig installs Stolpersteine in Bonfeld in 2018. Photograph © Roman Eisele, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

 
 

Opposition Centers on the Loss of Everyday Memory

The political reaction largely follows the artwork’s spatial argument. Saxony CDU general secretary Tom Unger said Stolpersteine make visible that Nazi crimes were committed against neighbors in the middle of towns, and he called a categorical exclusion the wrong course. Jens-Christian Wagner, director of the Buchenwald Memorial, characterized the vote as an attempt to push remembrance out of public space.

Tobias Glittenberg, a descendant of a victim of Nazi persecution, told WDR that remembrance is more respectful at the place where a person lived and worked than at a cemetery with no connection to that life. AKuBiZ has said it is considering alternative memorial forms and possible legal action; no filing has been announced.

A freestanding Erinnerungszeichen for Paula and Fritz Jordan beside the entrance at Mauerkircherstraße 13 in Munich. Photograph by Renardo la vulpo, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

 
 

Five Stones Remain, but No Replacement Is Ready

Heidenau’s resolution bars future Stolpersteine from public streets; it does not remove the five already installed or prohibit placements on private land. Municipal records establish approvals in 2019 and 2021, making the 2026 vote a reversal of local practice rather than a continuation of it. The administration opposed the blanket rule and documented that the preferred cemetery plan still needs an agreed site, church consent, heritage approval, a design, and funding. The number of pending stones remains unresolved because the official file says seven while AKuBiZ told MDR 12, and no legal challenge has yet been filed.