From 1925

Initiated by

7th Royal Westphalian Train Battalion Traditionsverein (ex-serviceman’s association). The Train Battalion was a military supply unit.

Designed by

Sculptor Franz Rüther, architect A. Buchs

Design

The Train Memorial is around six meters in height. It widens as it rises like an inverted obelisk. It has engravings and lettering on all four sides, plus imperial eagle, Iron Cross and soldier’s helmet symbols. Bronze plaques (99 x 79 cm) bearing inscriptions are set in front of and behind the memorial.

Official opening

July 4th and 5th, 1925
Location in city map

Historical context

Object of remembrance

The Train Memorial commemorates soldiers from the unit, based in Münster, who died in the First World War. The emphasis is on commemorating their military achievements and their ‘heroic’ deaths. The intention is to give retrospective meaning to their deaths. The symbols on the memorial are nationalistic and militaristic.

Subsequent debate around the memorial has focused on the two bronze plaques. The inscriptions commemorate a member of the Train Battalion who died in China during the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion, as well as two soldiers of the Battalion who died in colonial German South West Africa during the brutal suppression of the Herero and Nama uprisings in 1905/06. This gives the war memorial a colonial dimension.

Historical context

The 7th Westphalian Train Battalion was stationed in Münster from 1853 to 1918, and had barracks on Weißenburgstraße and what is today Habichtshöhe in the Geistviertel district, and on the site of what is now Südpark.
The Train Memorial commemorates 855 soldiers from the 7th Train Battalion who died in the First World War. The monument was erected in the early years of the Weimar Republic.
Soldiers from the unit were also active in the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1901 and the colonial conflicts in German South West Africa in 1904–1906. The unit as a whole did not participate in these military actions, rather participation was limited to volunteers from the regiment.
The operations in present-day Namibia were recognised as genocide by the UN in 1948. The German government formally adopted the same position in 2015. Between 1904 and 1908, German colonial troops led by General Lothar von Trotha drove tens of thousands of Hereros into the waterless Omaheke desert, viewing their total extermination as a price worth paying. Tens of thousands of Hereros died. The specific role played by the members of the Train Battalion who lost their lives in the conflict is not known.
The speeches made at the inauguration of the memorial in 1925 made no reference to the three soldiers who died in these colonial conflicts or to the bronze plaques, but were limited to the soldiers who died in the First World War.
At the inauguration of the monument in July 1925, both military and civil society speakers expressed historical revisionism. The Chairman of the Monuments Committee wished for “the hour in which our people, after our long shame, will rise once more, in which our descendants will once again be able to stand before the monuments to our dead with heads held high.” (Westfälischer Merkur, July 6th, 1925)

Public perceptions

The Train Memorial has frequently provoked debate and has been the object of political protests. The main criticism has been the failure to commemorate the victims of colonial crimes in Germany’s former colonies. This is evidenced by a number of protests.
On December 9th, 1982, Arbeitskreis Afrika (AKAFRIK) veiled the memorial with black foil and the words on it “This memorial is a badge of shame.” In an accompanying flyer, AKAFRIK wrote: "Who in our city is aware that, in our colony many years ago, a genocide was committed in the name of the people and the Kaiser, the sequel to which, amplified to the most terrible degree, was the genocide of the Jews under Nazism?"
A proposal was then submitted to the City Council to install an additional plaque describing the German genocide of the Herero and Nama. The proposal was rejected with the justification that, "Existing older war memorials should not be altered and should not be modified by the addition of further plaques." The opinion of the City Council was that the monuments were historical testimonies from the past.
After their request was rejected in February 1983, AKAFRIK made a second attempt, by presenting the city with a commemorative plaque as a gift. The Green Alternative Party (GAL) submitted a citizens’ motion to the council calling for the plaque to be installed by the memorial permanently. They called for a sincere examination of Germany’s history, for the German genocide in German South West Africa to be openly discussed, and for an admission of guilt.
This prompted an intense discussion of the term ‘genocide’. Ultimately, a compromise proposal was submitted by the City Council, under which a plaque with the following inscription would be installed on the Zwinger (a former prison castle): “We remember the victims of German colonial rule in Africa.” This was rejected by AKAFRIK and the GAL.
In late 1985, historians and local politicians held a panel discussion on the planned memorial plaque. This did not produce a solution.

In 2009, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) submitted to the Bezirksvertretung Mitte (borough council for the central district) a proposal to erect an additional memorial plaque. This was erected in 2010.
In 2017, the DIE LINKE, a democratic socialist political party, proposed to undertake a critical examination of Münster’s war memorials including the Train Memorial. At that time, an artwork by Lara Favaretto, meant as an anti-monument, was installed in the immediate vicinity of the memorial as part of the Skulptur Projekte Münster sculpture exhibition.
The Train Memorial was again covered over by peace campaigners. The local branch of the Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker (Society for Threatened Peoples) called for a new concept for carrying out a critical examination of Münster’s public monuments. The Green, christian democratic (CDU) and the social democratic (SPD) parties followed this up by putting forward a motion to the Bezirksvertretung Mitte. In June 2020, the City Council decided to install the memorial plaque proposed by Arbeitskreis Afrika in 1984 and to convert the Train Memorial into a place for discourse on how to come to terms with war memorials.

THE CITY OF MÜNSTER ADMITS THE GERMAN RESPONSIBILITY FOR COLONIAL INJUSTICE AND THE GENOCIDE OF THE HERERO AND NAMA BETWEEN 1904 AND 1908.
Münster, 2022

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