At this point on the grounds, two testaments to the resistance against the annihilation of the human encounter each other. The aluminum plaque by Eberhard F. Gutberlet preserves a fragment by Paul Celan: „A star still has light. Nothing, nothing is lost.“ It is a sentence that breathes hope despite the deepest darkness. The plaque stands in direct dialogue with Friedhelm Welge's sculpture, which is a memorial to Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Bonhoeffer, who was murdered in Flossenbürg concentration camp in 1945, is portrayed here as a modern Christopher. Like the patron saint of travelers, he helped his fellow prisoners in Gestapo custody to reach „the other side“ – not just physically, but by preserving their dignity and humanity. He was the steadfast support in times of greatest need, a Christopher of flesh and blood who rendered his executioners powerless because his spirit remained unconquerable.
This plaque is also part of a larger literary path that inextricably links Celan with Rose Ausländer. Both came from the German-Jewish cultural tradition in Czernowitz and met during the Shoah in the ghetto there. This shared experience of persecution and loss shaped their entire creative work and later brought them together again in Paris, where Celan encouraged Ausländer to radically renew her poetry. The fact that both texts have now found their place here on the grounds, each corresponding with a sculpture by Welge, weaves an invisible network of history and common origin. It is a dialogue about survival and the power of language, reminding us that we are never entirely in the dark as long as a star still has light.
