Ravensburg, Germany (dpa) – A town in Germany has created a statue to commemorate those hurt or killed by landmines, in the form of a metal statue of a mine victim, to complement a controversial memorial to Wehrmacht general Erwin Rommel.
Heidenheim, in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, said the move sought to encourage discussion.
“A statue does not proclaim a truth but encourages people to seek it,” Mayor Bernhard Ilg said on Thursday as the statue was presented.
Rommel, who lived from 1891 to 1944, was a field marshal and commander of the German Africa Corps during World War II, and ordered the laying of countless mines there.
He later turned his sympathies to the military resistance, and died after he was forced to commit suicide – instead of facing trial as a conspirator in a plot to assassinate Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Rainer Jooss, the artist who created the new statue, also said he did not see the memorial’s expansion as a final word in terms of history, but hoped that future generations would form their own views based on a factual understanding of the history of the times.
The Rommel monument by Heidenheim sculptor Franklin Puehn was donated to the town in 1961 by the German Africa Corps association.
The town council has been considering adding another memorial to the monument ever since 2014, making a budget of 40,000 euros (46,438 dollars) available for the project.
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