The town hall of Heidenau features a freshly restored cream-coloured facade, tidy flower boxes, and a charming shingled clocktower, masking a sharp political fault line running through eastern Germany. On September 24, 2026, the municipal council in this Saxony town voted to halt the laying of new Stolpersteine—the palm-sized, donor-funded brass plaques embedded in pavements to honour victims of the Nazi era. The decision materialized when the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party joined forces with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to secure a majority.
A Grassroots Memorial Stalled by Political Realities
Created by artist Gunter Demnig, the Stolpersteine—or stumbling stones—represent the world’s biggest grassroots memorial project. More than 128,000 such stones exist across 31 countries, serving as a decentralized monument keeping alive the individual stories of those murdered or hounded into suicide by the Nazi regime. In Heidenau, a single brass plaque sits near the town hall entrance, honouring former mayor Paul Gröger. However, local activists from the citizens’ group AKuBiZ, which couples history education with pro-democracy work, were blocked from laying another 12 plaques for Holocaust victims.
“They want to drive the victims’ memory out of the city centre, just like the victims themselves were driven out,” Anne Nitschke of AKuBiZ said. Nitschke noted that the group’s application for 12 new plaques was rejected by the council.
Supporters of the ban argued that embedding the memorials in the ground meant pedestrians walked on them and exposed them to the elements. Instead, the council suggested establishing a “memorial space” in a Christian cemetery north of town “for the victims of war, terrorism, dictators and forced displacement”. Critics, including Nitschke, pointed out that the council had not made any plans or committed funding for such an endeavour, and argued that the broad spectrum cited served to deny the “singularity of the Holocaust”.
Outrage Across Germany and International Condemnation
The vote in Heidenau triggered swift national and international condemnation. Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, posted on X that he was “ashamed” by the decision, noting that stumbling stones in Berlin commemorate members of his own family who were forced to flee Germany. “In Germany in the year 2026, a city council decides to no longer install new Stolpersteine,” Prosor wrote, emphasizing that erasing the physical markers of victims amounts to erasing the past itself.
The International March of the Living issued a statement calling the Heidenau vote a “wake-up call” against efforts to push the memory of Nazi victims out of public life. Meanwhile, Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor and president of the Jewish Community in Munich, said she was “appalled that a democratic party would stoop to supporting such a transparent manoeuvre by the extremists of the AfD”.
Karin Prien, a member of the CDU, similarly criticized the decision, telling Bild that banishing memorial sites from public spaces to cemeteries prioritizes death over life and renders Jewish people invisible.
The Rising Electoral Clout of the Far-Right
The local maneuver highlights a broader political dilemma in Germany. The anti-immigrant, pro-Kremlin AfD has recently widened its lead in national polls, scoring major victories in state elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. While mainstream parties maintain a strict “firewall” policy ruling out cooperation with the far right, municipal policymaking in the former communist east frequently sees the AfD acting as an unavoidable partner.
Artist Gunter Demnig said that given the electoral rise of the AfD, “it was certainly to be expected that something like this would happen.” The AfD has long targeted Germany’s culture of remembrance, arguing that it fosters unearned national shame. Party founder Alexander Gauland once infamously compared the Nazi era to a “speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history.”
Diverging Local Perspectives and the Road Ahead
Reactions among Heidenau’s residents remain sharply divided. Christine Bauer, an 85-year-old resident, opposed the ban. “Why would they have anything against the Stolpersteine? It’s easy enough to walk around them if you don’t want to step on them,” she said.
As the debate reverberates across Germany, the decision in Heidenau illustrates how deeply contested the physical landscape of memory remains, 81 years after the end of the war.
