Art route along works related to the Second World War.

In 1945 it was decided to erect a monument to keep alive the memory of the battle fought by the inhabitants of the province of Groningen from 1940-1945. This became the provincial war memorial Saint George and the dragon by Ludwig Oswald Wenckebach (1895-1962), where wreaths are laid every year on 4 May during Remembrance Day.

The artwork shows how good triumphs over evil, and has its origins in the early Christian legend of Saint George and the dragon, which dates back to the fifth century. The martyr Georgius defeated a dragon in his native region in Asia, after which the people converted en masse to Christianity. Since about the eleventh century it has been a popular motif for depicting the struggle between good and evil.

Tongues of fire and a crystal shape depict the text that can be read on the bronze plaque:

Toen rees uit oorlog en vuur, het helder kristal van de vrede
'Then arose from war and fire, the clear crystal of peace'

This text expresses the fierce battle that accompanied the liberation of the city of Groningen by the Canadian forces. On April 13, 1945, the Canadians entered the city of Groningen, where fierce and devastating fighting was fought on and around the Grote Markt. On Monday, April 16, the Canadians closed in further on the inner city and broke the last resistance.

The maker of the work, Willem Valk, played an active role in the artists' resistance during the Second World War. A side effect of this arrangement was that in the first decade after the war he was asked to design and make more than twenty war memorials in Groningen and beyond.

Tongues of fire and a crystal shape depict the text that can be read on the bronze plaque: 'Then arose from war and fire / the clear crystal of peace'. This text expresses the fierce battle that accompanied the liberation of the city of Groningen by the Canadian forces. On April 13, 1945, the Canadians entered the city of Groningen, where fierce and devastating fighting was fought on and around the Grote Markt. On Monday, April 16, the Canadians closed in further on the inner city and broke the last resistance.

The maker of the work, Willem Valk, played an active role in the artists' resistance during the Second World War. A side effect of this arrangement was that in the first decade after the war he was asked to design and make more than twenty war memorials in Groningen and beyond.

The word DAMALS has been applied on the side wall of the Werkmanhuis near the second floor, in memory of the Groningen printer and artist Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman who had his printing business here from 1923 until he was murdered by the Germans in 1945. Artist Peter de Kan was inspired by The Next Call, a series of nine notebooks that Werkman published clandestinely between 1923 and 1926.

For the ninth and final Next Call, published in 1926 and dedicated to the Serbian avant-gardist Ljubomir Micić, Werkman wrote the poem Damals, which echoes despondency and resignation as well as longing and a longing for a lost paradise:

Damals als die Erde noch nicht rund war.
Damals als die Kunst noch keine Kunst war.
Damals als die Ameise noch nicht fleiszig war.
Damals als er noch jung war.
Damals als sie noch klein war.
Damals als meine Mutter noch sang.
Damals als es Sommer war.
Damals als es noch vorgestern war.
Damals als gestern noch nicht heute war.

You're now in the Folkingestraat. In this street you find five artworks that are part of Imagine the past, a project realized in 1997, for which five artists have integrated works of art in the street in an unemphatic manner, which refer to the Jewish past of the Folkingestraat. For centuries this place was the center of a vibrant Jewish culture; something that the synagogue from 1905 still remembers. The Second World War brought this to an abrupt end, when many residents were deported to concentration camps.

For the artwork Galgal hamazalot by Joseph Semah you have to keep your eyes on the ground. Semah created a lunar cycle in the middle of the pavement of Folkingestraat: eleven bronze moon shapes, from full moon to new moon. When all the shapes are put together, an eye is created. The full moon acts as a pupil.

The word moon in Hebrew means eye and is also connected to the number eleven because numbers are linked to words in Hebrew. For Semah, the lunar cycle is a metaphor for the cycle of life and the cycles that make up history and the future.

Ook Hier ('Here Too') is a special work of art. De Kan had the word ‘(weggehaald)’ (‘('removed')’) milled out of the facade. In this way, he wants to emphasise the loss and emptiness in the Jewish and Groningen community after the Second World War. Placing the word between brackets accentuates not being present. De Kan wanted to show “that it is gone, without putting back what is gone". 

The inconspicuous location of the artwork also has a special reason. According to the artist, it is a subject that no longer lives with everyone, it has disappeared to the margins of attention. That's why he placed his artwork in the sideline, outside the direct field of view.

Van Altena made enamel signs for three different porches. He found the photographs that he incorporated in this in the municipal archives. They were made at the beginning of this century in the same place where they now hang in the artist's work. 
 
They act as a mirror of the past. As a spectator, you become a witness to what once took place here, such as a street party or the performance of a theatre club. It creates a festive feeling that is further enhanced by the “confetti” scattered over the photographs.

A horse butcher lived in the building at number 23 before the Second World War. Marijke Gémessy was inspired by this fact. This butcher was one of the many Jewish shopkeepers who contributed to the prosperity of Folkingestraat. At regular intervals, the horses were brought in and driven into the corridor to the slaughterhouse. The memory of this part of the past is now maintained by the ceramic relief Het voorgesneden paradepaard ('The pre-cut parade horse'). 
 
On the relief, a horse's hind legs can be seen in side view, life-size. Clasped between two walls we see it just walk into the butcher's shop, just before it will be slaughtered. The dissection – steak and loin – has already been made visible. It even has a quality mark. Behind the horse, authentic butcher's tiles can be seen, only the colour has been changed by the artist. Because of the reflective effect, the space seems larger. By placing the horse on a plinth, the work becomes not only a tribute to the former shopkeeper but also a tribute to the slaughtered horse.

The monumental synagogue occupies almost the entire block between Nieuwstad and Zuiderdiep. It has been there since 1906, on the spot where a much smaller and less impressive synagogue previously stood. The building was designed by architect Tjeerd Kuipers (1857-1942), who also designed the Zuiderkerk on Stationsstraat in Groningen. After the Second World War, the Jewish Community was forced to sell the building, after which a laundry was added, among other things. From 1973 it became vacant and was threatened with demolition. Fortunately, the dilapidated building was saved and restored in the early 1980s. Since then, the Synagogue has been in full use again, as a shul, but also as a place where exhibitions and concerts are organized, for example.

Opening hours Synagoge Groningen:

• January to February:  Wed, Fri, Sun 1-5 p.m.
• March to December:  Tue to Fri and Sun 1-5 p.m.
• Extra opening from July to September: Thurs and Fri 10.30 a.m.- 5 p.m.

In a wall with a bricked-up window on the corner building of Folkingestraat, Gert Sennema placed a door with a hard stone step in front of it. Nothing special in itself. The door, however, lacks a door handle, an opportunity to be opened.

The history of the Folkingestraat is hidden behind this closed door and window. A history that can only be retold by few, because most of the people who once lived there were taken away during the Second World War.

It looks like the door is made of solid wood, but on closer inspection it turns out to be made of bronze. Sennema treated it with patina, which evokes the structure and color of wood.

In 1982, the artist group Forma Aktua, led by Henri de Wolf, championed a liberation art project, in which five flags would be placed in different neighborhoods as a “warning and revival” against fascism. But their proposal was rejected by the city council. Forma Aktua then donated one flag to the municipality: the Vijf Mei-Vlag ('Five May Flag').

It is a monument to the Jews deported from Groningen and was therefore deliberately placed in the vicinity of the Folkingestraat, the area where a large part of the Jewish population lived before the Second World War. The two kinks in the flagpole symbolize the shock of the war period and the liberation on May 5, 1945 respectively. The frayed edge of the flag seems to refer to the lasting scars; Before the war, the Groningen Jewish community had about three thousand members, after that this number was only two hundred.

Abraham Hesselink made this monument in 1922 in memory of the painter Jozef Israels. The sculpture group is inspired by a painting by Israels, Langs moeders graf ('Passing Mother's Grave'), which is on long-term loan to the Groninger Museum.

During the Second World War, the work was seriously damaged. Jozef Israels was Jewish and NSB members had therefore intended the image in the spring of 1943. Fortunately, the debris was brought to safety. The portrait relief was later recovered. After the war, the artwork was restored by Willem Valk and unveiled again in 1946. For thirty years it fulfilled the function of a memorial monument, until the installation in 1977 of Eduard Waskowsky's Jewish Monument on Hereweg.