Schleswig-Holstein At It Again

For Whom the Bell Tolls

But it is not the slabs with the names of the fallen soldiers that are attracting visitors' attention at this war memorial in Tümlauer-Koog, located on the Eiderstedt peninsula near the Danish border in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein. Instead, it is a massive bell that dominates the memorial -- and it is dedicated to Nazi leader Hermann Göring, Adolf Hitler's second-in-command.

The small settlement of Tümlauer-Koog is built on land reclaimed from the sea ("Koog" is a northern German word for polder) during the Nazi period, under the influence of Hitler's "blood and soil" ideology, which glorified rural living and promoted the idea of Lebensraum("living space"). Up until 1945, the community was known as Hermann-Göring-Koog. Göring himself traveled to the newly reclaimed polder in 1935 to inaugurate it.