Michaela Melián

10.04.2024 –
01.06.2024

Ulrichsschuppen

The prisoner of war and forced labour camp in the former Ulrichsschuppen at Bremen's grain and factory harbour 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. They had previously been housed on the Admiral Brommy, a former American freighter in the grain and factory harbour. The ship, which had served as a training ship for North German Lloyd since 1928, had been converted into a camp for the prisoners in 1940. Due to unsustainable conditions, against which the Red Cross intervened several times, the inmates were now transferred to the sheds. Later, Soviet forced labourers were also brought in. 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.

After the Second World War, the internment camp fell into oblivion and was once again used as a shed. In 1989, following information provided by a former Soviet forced labourer, murals by French prisoners of war were discovered there, which were probably created in 1942/43. Various painting styles indicate that several prisoners were involved. 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 Ulrich sheds 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 for a memorial site in its original location.

The artwork by 2018 Roland Prize winner Michaela Melián was created on this site. The artist has recreated the façade of the shed on the property, but tilted horizontally rather than vertically. The façade marks the lost site and at the same time commemorates the many prisoners of war and deportees from all over Europe who had to perform forced labour in Bremen's ports. Around the memorial site, the container towers rise into the sky and form a striking contrast to the façade lying flat on the ground.

Michaela Melián is showing a series of sewing machine drawings at Galerie K' that refer to the former forced labour sheds. Here, the artist reconstructs the outlines of the now demolished buildings in light, clear thread lines. Melián has already used this technique in earlier works. For example in Triangle (2003), in which she shows a journey through the Lüneburg Heath with its fields, roads and buildings, including the Bergen-Belsen memorial.