A Stolperstein is a concrete block with a brass plate on top, set flush with the pavement. The word is German for “stumbling stone”, though you do not trip over the stones physically. On German stones the text is in German. Below are the German words that appear most often, with their meanings.
How the text begins
The text usually begins with HIER WOHNTE, which means “here lived”. Then come the name, the year of birth, and what happened. The text is stamped into the brass by hand, letter by letter. Variants exist too, such as “here worked”, “here studied” and “here practised”.
Words about life and persecution
- Jg.: Jahrgang, the year of birth.
- Flucht: flight. The word means that the person fled.
- Flucht in den Tod: literally “flight into death”. It means the person took their own life to escape persecution.
- verhaftet: arrested.
- Schutzhaft: so-called protective custody, meaning imprisonment without trial.
- eingewiesen: committed to an institution.
- deportiert: deported.
- ermordet: murdered.
Survival and liberation
- überlebt: survived. Stones are also laid for people who survived, for example by fleeing or going into hiding, so that families are shown complete.
- befreit: liberated.
Gunter Demnig often quotes a saying from the Talmud: a person is only forgotten when his or her name is forgotten.
Since 2005 the stones have been made by hand by the sculptor Michael Friedrichs-Friedlaender in Berlin. Where very many people were victims, there is sometimes a Stolperschwelle, or stumbling threshold: a long brass strip with one text for the whole group.
Stones are requested and paid for by private people and local groups, such as relatives, residents, schools, local foundations and history societies. Local volunteers research the person’s life in archives and ask the municipality for permission, because the pavement is public ground.
Outdoors, brass first turns brown and then dark. If the text is hard to read, you may clean the stone. Anyone may do this, and no permission is needed. See the cleaning page.
On the Stolpersteine.app map you can see who is commemorated at an address.
Read on
What do the French words on a pavé de mémoire mean?
French stones use words such as né, arrêté, déporté and assassiné. This guide explains what they mean, so you can read the text on a pavé de mémoire.
What was Westerbork, the name on so many Dutch Stolpersteine?
Westerbork was a transit camp in Drenthe, through which most Jews from the Netherlands were deported to Auschwitz and Sobibor. Here are the figures.
Auschwitz, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen: place names on Stolpersteine
Many Stolpersteine name a Nazi camp such as Auschwitz or Sobibor. Here is what these place names refer to on a stone, and where to find more.
