Augsburger Strasse 21 in Berlin

Am 17. September 2016 wurde in der Augsburger Straße 21 (früher 48) in Berlin-Charlottenburg auf Initiative der Hausgemeinschaft (vielen Dank!) in Anwesenheit der Holocaust-Überlebenden Margot Friedländer eine Gedenktafel für Walter Serner enthüllt. Es ist die erste deutsche Gedenktafel für den 1942 ermordeten Schriftsteller und Dadaisten. In der Augsburger Straße begann Serners Berliner Zeit, hier arbeitete er für "Die Aktion" von Franz Pfemfert, den er wohl um die Ecke am Kurfürstendamm im Café des Westens ("Café Größenwahn") kennen lernte. 

Margot Friedländer und Walter Serner in der New York Times vereint

Die New York Times berichtet in der Printausgabe vom 24. Oktober 2016 über die Veranstaltung im Beisein der Holocaust-Überlebenden Margot Friedländer (S. 6, Titel: "Germany Confronts, in a Unique Exhibit, Its ‘Holocaust of the Bullets’", von Alison Smale, online 23.10.2016; auf den Bildern links Hans Gerhard Hannesen von der Hausgemeinschaft, Andreas Mosbacher); hier ein Auszug:

"Margot Friedlander, 94, is one such survivor. Born in Berlin, she was hidden by Germans from 1943 to 1944 and then deported to Theresienstadt, the camp north of Prague where she met her future husband, Adolf Friedlander.

A rabbi married them in spring 1945 in Theresienstadt, and the next year they left for New York, where her husband helped run the 92nd Street Y for 28 years. After he died in 1997, she started writing her memoir, eventually published in German.

That led to a trip to Berlin, and a decision to stay. Visiting schools is perhaps the most important part of her new life, she said, “because they are the future.”

Ms. Friedlander was attending a gathering of about 60 people one Saturday morning in September. The crowd had assembled first outside the elegant apartment building at Augsburger Strasse 21 and then moved inside to the apartment where Walter Serner, a Dadaist writer, once lived.

Although Serner, born Walter Seligmann in Bohemia, converted to Catholicism in 1909, to the Nazis he was a Jew. In 1942, after an itinerant life, Serner and his wife were arrested and sent to Theresienstadt, and then on to the Latvian capital, Riga. Along with the 900 or so other Jews on their transport train, they were shot in a forest outside the city in August 1942.

The small ceremony to honor Serner was almost entirely made possible by the enthusiasm of Andreas Mosbacher, a judge and law professor who was struck several years ago by Serner’s work and fate.

What works might Serner have written had he lived, the guests wondered. “No one — or very few — has heard of him now,” Judge Mosbacher said. Like much of the art created in Theresienstadt, Serner’s writings attest to a use of the German language and artistic endeavor that has now withered.

In this respect, did Hitler’s efforts to mold German culture triumph?

Not if you listen to Ms. Friedlander, who has faith in the young. “What was, was,” she said. Now, “they are the ones who must shape society.”