Installing Stolpersteine at Charlottenstraße 22

The development of a body of photographic work is an aside to my main priority: the installation of Stolpersteine in Wrocław in memory of my great-grandparents, Georg and Else Kornicker, who were murdered at Auschwitz in 1943.

In order to install Stolpersteine, it's necessary to precisely identify – on a contemporary street plan – the entrance to the building where Georg and Else lived prior to Enteignung, as this is where the stones would typically be installed. Unfortunately, Georg and Else's tenement building at Charlottenstraße 22 was located in a suburb southwest of Breslau's old town, right in the path of the main thrust of the Soviet attack beginning in February 1945. This area of the city was subject to heavy artillery and aerial bombardment, as well as months of intense fighting between Red Army and German Army infantry and tanks. Their entire street and most of the surrounding streets were damaged beyond repair, with very few examples of pre-war architecture remaining in the southwestern districts of modern Wrocław.

One building that does remain is the former Landesversicherungsanstalt (insurance institution), now an oncology centre, with a flat roof having replaced the pre-war pitched roof and ornate tower.

After the eventual fall of Breslau and its return to Polish rule following the Potsdam Conference, the city's name reverted to Wrocław, and Charlottenstraße became ul. Krucza (Raven). If the modern-day street numbering tracks with the pre-war numbering, Charlottenstraße 22 is some way along ul. Krucza, towards the neo-Romanesque Church of St. Charles Borromeo. But nothing's ever that simple.

I was able to visit the Wrocław Construction Archive today, with the help of Karolina Jara, a friend who spent many hours here carrying out research for her PhD thesis and knows her way around. What we found in the archive was well beyond my expectations. Inside an old leather folio were detailed site plans, floor plans and beautifully drawn building elevations.

One site plan showed workings out, where it appears a decision was made to reorient the street and reposition the building. At the time of construction there were allotments and open fields in this area of the city, so the planners were presumably unconstrained by existing street layouts or earlier construction.

We soon realised that the modern-day street numbering and even the position of the street bear little relation to what existed in 1939 when my grandfather lived in this building. I had a hunch – thanks to an old map in a book I randomly came across in an Airbnb apartment – that Charlottenstraße 22 might actually have been right on the corner of Charlottenstraße and Kronprinzenstraße, placing the building beneath the current footprint of Sky Tower, the fifth tallest building in Poland. My hunch was confirmed by comparing the location of the Landesversicherungsanstalt on a 1938 plan with the location of the oncology hospital on a modern map.

This is bad, and good, with the emphasis on bad. We now need to seek permission for the install not only from the city, but also the landowner. The installation of Stolpersteine continues to be a political issue in Poland and it's not clear what the landowner's position is likely to be.

If I were to take something positive from this, it's that the stones will (hopefully) be installed in a highly visible area of Wrocław where their presence may speak to more people, increasing their capacity to inform future generations.

Sky Tower is a building that divides opinion in Wrocław, but even before I was sure the foundations of Charlottenstraße 22 lie directly underneath it, I saw the tower as a sort of beacon that brought to mind my family whenever I saw it on the horizon. As I often make pictures in the shadow of Sky Tower it also acts as a convenient landmark, as there's no need to consult a map when trying to find my way there.

Thank you to Karolina Jara at OP ENHEIM and Wojtek Chrzanowski at ch+ architekci, without whose help I doubt this install would have progressed beyond the frustration of dealing with the city authorities (and getting absolutely nowhere).