Heidenau city council votes with AfD and CDU to ban Stolpersteine Nazi memorials

Council vote in Heidenau

The city council of Heidenau in Saxony approved a joint motion from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) at the end of September to halt the installation of new Stolpersteine. Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, are ten-centimetre brass cobblestones embedded into pavements outside the final residences of victims of the Nazi regime. The municipality currently has five such stones in place. One brass plaque sits directly in front of the Heidenau town hall, commemorating Paul Gröger, a former mayor of the town who died by suicide following persecution by the Nazis. The small Saxon town approved the measure roughly one month after regional elections, immediately blocking an active application from the civic education group AKuBiZ to place 12 additional stones honoring Holocaust victims.

Arguments over commemoration dignity

AfD representatives defended the municipal motion by claiming that pavement stones do not provide an appropriate setting for remembrance. Daniel Barthel, the president of the AfD group on the Heidenau town council, argued that brass memorials on sidewalks are exposed to dirt, foot traffic, and municipal trash.

We have always regarded these stones as an undignified commemoration. They can be trampled on both consciously and unconsciously. Dirt and grime fall onto them.

Barthel pointed to nearby Dresden to justify the municipal ban, stating that memory stones installed near green spaces are soiled by animals and frequently covered by rubbish bins and trash cans.

Response from civic groups and historians

Historians and civic organizations across Germany condemned the municipal resolution and challenged the council's reasoning. Anne Nitschke, a 40-year-old activist with the Saxon historical education and democracy organization AKuBiZ, stated that encountering the stones during daily life forms the core purpose of the memorial network.

They want to remove the memory of the victims from the city centre, just as the victims themselves were previously removed.

Andréas Ullmann, a historian responsible for memorial stone engravings across Germany, rejected the AfD's hygiene arguments as fallacious, linking the municipal resolution directly to the party's growing political influence.

This ban is very clearly linked to the rise of the AfD.

Scale of the memorial network

The Stolpersteine initiative began in the 1990s and has grown into the world's largest decentralized grassroots memorial project. Funded entirely by private donations, each brass plaque is engraved with the name, birth date, and fate of a specific victim, covering Jews, Roma, political opponents, homosexuals, and people with disabilities. According to the foundation overseeing the project, there are 105,000 stones installed across Germany and 125,000 worldwide, with broader European estimates reaching approximately 128,000.

The Heidenau vote took place one month after regional election victories for the AfD in eastern Germany, alongside party gains in national polls and Berlin. Although the federal CDU under Chancellor Friedrich Merz adheres to a strict firewall policy against cooperating with the far-right party, municipal councillors in Heidenau joined with the AfD to establish the majority required to halt the memorial program.