Walter Krämer-Platz

This multi-part design by the artist Erwin Wortelkamp was created in memory of Walter Krämer as part of a patient garden for the newly built Siegen district hospital. The site thus connects the general idea of selfless healing and protection on the one hand and the memory of Walter Krämer on the other.

The latter was born in Siegen in 1892 and was one of the founders of the local German Communist Party (KPD) in 1920. He was elected to the Prussian parliament in 1932, arrested after the Reichstag fire in 1933 and, having served a prison sentence, transferred to the Lichtenburg concentration camp. In 1937 he was forced to help build the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he took over as head of the hospital in 1939. Having taught himself medical expertise, he helped numerous prisoners as the “doctor of Buchenwald.” He was later transferred to a satellite camp in Goslar-Hahndorf, where he was shot in 1941. After the Second World War, Walter Krämer received numerous posthumous honours and was awarded the “Righteous Among Nations” medal by the Yad Vashem Memorial in Israel in 2000.

In its totality, Walter Krämer-Platz is an enclosed garden with plane trees, beech hedges and benches and tables for resting. In the middle of the site is a stela bearing a black-and-white portrait photo of Walter Krämer etched in glass. The most important stations of his life are inscribed on the concrete plinth. A flyer and an app provide additional information. A scroll embedded in the ground quotes the philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas as follows: “Care of the Other triumphs over care for oneself.”

A blackened bronze sculpture reminiscent of an abstract, protecting hand carved from wood forms a sculptural element standing alone on the lawn. Its counterpart is another bronze which was mounted as a “corner piece” on the façade of the main building at a height of seven metres. The two bronzes form a parenthesis connecting the building and the site and enclosing its design. A painting in the hospital foyer repeats the motif of protective hands and carries the artistic design into the interior of the building.

Flyer zum Walter Krämer-Platz