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not meant for Vondel Park“. I think it is very important that monuments arelocated in the centre of social life. Then they are most effective.”Professor Meyer-Hanno then described the situation in Frankfurt. Hereported that the Frankfurt Angel by Rosemarie Trockel (see Appendix,page 176) was chosen after a competition for which artists were invited tosubmit their designs. The angel was not – as first intended by the head ofthe Frankfurt Department of Culture – erected on the outskirts of the city,where there are also other monuments, but in the city centre, at the hub ofpresent-day gay life. Two streets cross this square, which initially had noname. A small „temple district“, marked by box hedges, invites passers byto sit down. The angel stands in the middle, a riddle of a monument that ishighly controversial as a work of art. You walk up to this graceful angel andnotice that something is not right. Something awful has been done to thisangel. What has happened? Then there is a moment of uncertainty thatforces one to think and has an effect.The monument was rapidly accepted by the people. Behind it are a gaypub, a large repertory cinema and a hotel. Many people stroll past it and inthe summer the benches are all occupied. The angel has become a meetingplace, a ‘consumer article’ in the best sense of the word. The monument‘works’. It is a place of calm and contemplation in this city with itsnoisy traffic, the figure of the angel, which has something graceful and sexlessabout it, probably does not lend itself to being painted or vandalised.Ms Baumann remarked that evidently both the Amsterdam and the Frankfurtmonuments were able to elicit identification. She wondered whether thiswas not in fact what evidences the effect of artistically convincing monuments.She reminded the panel of Christian Saehrendt’s scepticism,remarking that he had assumed that most of the functions of monumentshad little to do with their historical content and doubted that this, at least onits own, was responsible for the effect.Albert Eckert, a member of the Initiative ‘Remember the Homosexual Victimsof National Socialism’, responded to the expectations of the initiators,saying that he did not want a monument that set a keystone in a process ofremembrance and reappraisal by canonising a certain interpretation of history.For fear that this would happen the initiators had even discussed theidea of not having a monument built at all. However, the LSVD (Lesbianand Gay Federation in Germany) and the action group had come to considerthat it is possible to create a place of remembrance that keeps the discussionalive, rather than ending it. ”The task of the artists consists indesigning a place of remembrance that – as laid down in the resolution ofthe German Bundestag – honours the homosexual victims of the NationalSocialists. They were involuntary victims of the despotism and violence ofthe state, to use „victim“ in the sense defined by Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper(see page 102). The place of remembrance should also keep alive memoriesof injustice and – and for us this is politically indispensable – set a worthyexample against hostility towards and intolerance and marginalization oflesbians and gays.142