„Where are you taking us?“

The so-called “Euthanasia-Action” (Aktion T 4) of the National Socialists claimed about 200,000 mentally ill and handicapped victims during World War II. They were considered “not worthy of living”. At least 90,000 patients died of hunger or inadequate nourishment, or were murdered with drugs in state-run sanatoriums. More than 70,000 men, women, and children were murdered in gas chambers during the secret operation “T4” in 1940/41. The mass murder was centrally organised at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin (therefore the abbreviation “T4”). Grafeneck, Brandenburg, Bernburg, Hartheim (near Linz), Sonnenstein and Hadamar were the towns where the murders took place. The staff of these killing institutions later worked in concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec. There is hardly a region in Germany that was not effected by this organised mass murder. Mentally and physically handicapped people were the first victims of a systematic, well-organised annihilation plan directed against the ill and those regarded as “racially inferior” by the Nazi-regime. The “Monument of the Grey Buses” serves as a reminder of the transports of the patients to their deaths. The artists Horst Hoheisel and Andreas Knitz designed the monument for the Weißenau Psychiatric Centre near Ravensburg in 2006.
A bus based on the same model as the one that drove from the hospitals to the death camps in the years 1940 and 1941, in its original size and concrete form, commemorates the mass murder. “Where are you taking us?” – the question of one of the patients - is inscribed on the bus monument.

Das Denkmal der grauen Busse © Moving Monuments ©

Hoheisel&Knitz (Ravensburg 2006) (Berlin 2008) (Brandenburg an der Havel 2009)

For the victims of the »Euthanasia« - campaign in 1940/41
in the former Sanatorium Ravensburg-Weißenau (Psychiatric Clinic)

The monument was inaugurated on the memorial day for the victims of the Nazis, January, 27^th 2007.
In the evening of January, 26^th 2007 a Publication was released:
„Erinnern und Gedenken – Das Mahnmal Weißenau und die Erinnerungskultur in Ravensburg“

The second Bus cast in concrete will be placed at the first location in Ravensburg on January, 27^th in the morning. 70 tons of heavy history will be moved on a platform by a crane. A few years later the monument will be moved again. We do not know where the next place will be. May be in the next town or once at the place of the “Euthanasia-Organisation T 4” in Berlin, Tiergartenstrasse 4.
It is close to the Philharmony and the Potsdamer Platz.
Today there is a bus stop.

Horst Hoheisel and Andreas Knitz - Ravensburg / Kassel Januar 2007




The Monument of the Grey Buses
More than 60 years after the transports from Weissenau across the Region to Grafeneck (at that stage the buses and
their destination were already well known by the people) a monument, which ought to recall the Death Trips, was realised
on the draft of Horst Hoheisel & Andreas Knitz: A walkable grey bus, sliced in segments, cast in concrete in full-scale,
permanently blocks the historic door, the former gate, through which the death buses of “Euthanasia”-T4-campaign left
the premises of the ancient sanatorium Weissenau.

The Moving Monument
A second similar grey monument-bus changes its location over the years. It appears in Ravensburg and later on moves along the historic route via several stations to Grafeneck, the death venue of the patients. The second grey bus will be located alongside
the route to Grafeneck in several places. The change of places will take months or years, according to the duration of negotiation
and organisation (the transport shall be financed with donations or public funds).

With this draft we do not only want to raise a monument for the victims of the “euthanasia”-murder, but also reflect
the deed and the perpetrators by using the grey buses, the tools of the perpetrators, as a “means of transport” of memory.
It is a matter of retrospection of an entire region, not only of Ravensburg and Weissenau.

Horst Hoheisel und Andreas Knitz - Ravensburg 2006 (Translation: Sinje Miebach)

Prof. Dr. Stefanie Endlich, Kunstpublizistin:
The Monument of the Grey Buses in the context of memorization-culture (Erinnerungskultur )

(„Erinnern und Gedenken – Das Mahnmal Weißenau und die Erinnerungskultur in Ravensburg“ S 75-78)

One can hardly imagine a bigger discrepancy to traditional forms of memorials and their representation of reverence,
dignity and pathos. Neither cast in bronze nor carved out of stone but put in shape computer-controlled from grey
ferro-concrete, the monument of the grey busses rises into the street space as an enigmatic debris.
From a distance it may appear brusque and repellent in its blocky shape. By approaching it opens up in
the middle towards an aisle across history.
The sculptural replica of a „Grey Bus“ used at that time now serves as remembrance of the victims of
the „euthanasia“-action, which were carried in these vehicles from the hospitals to the sites of murder.
The image of the bus at the same time provokes the question after the offenders and complices, the citizens
that watched or looked the other way when the busses passed their streets, and the conditions and
backgrounds of the mass murders. The historical Gate at the interface between the hospital and the
town – almost forgotten for decades – where the busses left Weissenau with the patients was chosen as location. (...)

Horst Hoheisel and Andreas Knitz created an artwork which holds a lot of potential for memory culture.
It introduces a distinctive theme to the context of the numerous monuments and benchmarks that remind
of the national socialist terror. On the visual basis of memorial art it can probably symbolize the
theme „euthanasia“ in a similar way like it is already the case in the area of research and procurement.
This form of the „Grey Bus“ does not result from the search for a preferably fancy and new artistic
version to express the individual creative script. It is a result of a censorious examination of the theme,
the „euthanasia“-murder program and its social , spacial and organizational basic conditions by the two artists. (...)
(Translation: Sinje Miebach)