Henning Meyer
This cosy, tree-lined square has had quite different names throughout its history. Initially, it bore the local name ‘Ruckshof’. In the years before 1945 it was given the name of an ugly dictator and war criminal of Austrian origin. And today it is called Friedrich-Ebert-Square and is named after the first President of the Weimar Republic, the first German democracy. For over a century, this has also been the place where the people of Hornburg have commemorated their war dead. At the very edge of the square stands a grey obelisk on a pedestal. It is the oldest war memorial in Hornburg and dates back to 1895. On the front of the plinth, Kaiser Wilhelm I is depicted within a medallion. On the left side, there is a glorified reminder of Bismarck's wars, which led to German unification in 1871 and the founding of the Second German Empire. Opposite, on the right, the only war dead that Hornburg had to mourn in these wars is remembered. His name was Joseph Schwabe, son of the Jewish merchant Jacob Schwabe. He was killed during the French campaign in 1870.
In 1924, a few years after the lost First World War, a semicircular colonnade was built on the square, on whose columns the names of the fallen can be read - this time many more than only one. The obelisk was moved to the middle of the circle, which combined the commemoration of the dead with the dream of national greatness. The fallen were glorified as "heroes" who died willingly and happily for their fatherland. The fact that the war dead were merely exposed to the terrible pressure of the situation to which they ultimately fell victim was completely ignored. Despite all the tragedy, there is something amusing about the fact that the Jewish fallen soldier Jacob Schwabe was the focus of hero worship when right-wing nationalists and Nazis held their ceremonies at this place.
In 1955, the complex was redesigned again. In the middle there is now a block in memory of the dead of World War II. The war memorial from 1895 has been moved to the edge. This is accompanied by a change in the culture of remembrance. Today, these dead are remembered above all as victims of a wrongful war. And they remind us to work politically to ensure that never again entire generations have to lose their lives on the battlefield for no reason but a criminal delusion.