Ulrichsschuppen
Melian_Gedenkort-Ulrichsschuppen_2024-04-08
Gedenkort Lager Ulrichsschuppen, 2024
Alter Bremer Holz- und Fabrikenhafen, Ecke Memeler/Revaler Straße
Bremen is getting a memorial to the prisoners of war and deportees from all over Europe who were interned in the so-called Ulrichsschuppen during the Second World War and had to perform forced labour in Bremen’s ports.
The prisoner of war and forced labour camp in the former Ulrichsschuppen at Bremen’s grain and factory port is one of several hundred camps set up in Bremen during the war to intern foreign prisoners of war and civilian forced labourers from German-occupied countries. Their exact number is therefore difficult to determine. It is estimated that there were up to 75,000 people, including prisoners of war and concentration camp refugees, who had to perform forced labour in Bremen companies.
From 1942 to 1944, the former Ulrichsschuppen 9 and 10 were also used as an internment camp for French prisoners of war, who had previously been housed on a former American freighter in the grain and factory harbour. Soviet forced labourers were also added later. The list shows 983 prisoners in the village. Both sheds were part of an ensemble of 21 sheds that were built in 1912/13 and then in the 1920s in the Revaler Straße, Memeler Straße and Fabrikufer area and were operated by the former haulage company P. H. Ulrichs.
In 1989, murals by French prisoners of war were discovered in the internment camp, which had fallen into oblivion after the Second World War, following information provided by a former Soviet forced labourer; they were probably painted in 1942/43. Different painting styles indicate the involvement of several prisoners. The 13 murals were recovered and are now on display in various institutions, including the Bremen State Archives, the State Office for Monument Protection and the Harbour Museum in Speicher XI.
In 2018, the harbour operating company J. Müller AG, Brake, acquired the sheds, which were demolished in February 2019. Containers are now stored there. The Ulrichsschuppen were one of the last places to commemorate forced labour in Bremen during the Second World War. In the course of the demolition, the company made the corner plot on Memeler/Revaler Straße available in its original location for a memorial site.
The artwork was created on this site. Michaela Melián has reconstructed the façade of the shed on the site, but tilted horizontally rather than vertically. The façade marks the place that has disappeared and at the same time commemorates the many prisoners of war and deportees from all over Europe who had to perform forced labour in the ports of Bremen. Around the memorial site, the container towers rise into the sky and form a striking contrast to the façade lying flat on the ground: today, containers are used to store goods, but are also used as modules to house labourers.
https://digitales-heimatmuseum.de/gedenkort-lager-ulrichsschuppen/