Gunter Demnig, a performance artist from Cologne, first thought of the idea of a literal stumbling block in 1993. History all too often reduces its victims to numbers, with so many million killed here and so many million reduced to ashes there. What he wanted to do was to create something that would enable ordinary Germans to remember ordinary Germans – something far more personal and immediate than a number, a name. So was born a project in which those long since disappeared and dead were to be remembered, literally under the feet of the general public.

What started as a relatively small project has grown organically but insistently since the first small exhibition in 1994. The incumbent priest of the Antoniter church in Cologne was one of the first to encourage the project and Demnig began to place the stumbling blocks – such as the ones above – around the city, with a further set in Berlin – all without permission.

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