What is a "Stolperstein"?

"Stolpersteine" or stumbling blocks are very common in German towns. Whoever walks through a city centre in Germany will repeatedly come across brass stones (or brass plates)

They are made of brass and are embedded in the pavement. Stumbling blocks are placed  to remind one of former residents of the buildings in front of them. These stumbling blocks remind of people who had to flee during the Third Reich or were deported and killed.

The artist Günter Demnig started this memorial practice in 1992. For Demnig it is important to bring remembrance from the central memorial sites into people's everyday lives and thus make the victims more visible. This means that no one can bypass the memorials and ignore them. In any case, the stones bring the names of the victims back to the places of their lives - usually to their last place of residence before escape or deportation.

Stumbling blocks in Aschaffenburg, picture A.Murmann