Untitled (grave monument)

About this artwork.

At the grave of Harm Engbert Blaauw on the Noorderbegraafplaats a sandstone monument has been placed. The monument has the shape of a sawn-off tree with a flared branch and flared roots. In the tree trunk you can read: “Broken but not uprooted”. 

Resistance fighter Harm Engbert Blaauw (born 1918) was executed on 22 January 1945 in Dokkum by the occupying forces. The image of the sawn-off tree symbolises the abrupt termination of a life in full bloom. To the left of the grave are the graves of four other men who were shot that day by the Germans.

Harm Engbert Blaauw was with the Packard resistance group during the war. This group, which was connected to the Academic Hospital Groningen, had set up a house in the Van Speyckstraat for the treatment of wounded Allied soldiers. However, the group was betrayed. Harm Engbert Blaauw was arrested and taken to the Scholtenshuis on the Grote Markt. Thereafter he was taken to the jail on the Hereweg. After a German commander was shot dead by resistance fighters in Valom in Friesland on 19 January 1945, a ruthless revenge by the occupying forces followed. On 22 January 1945, twenty prisoners from Friesland and Groningen were shot without trial on the Woudweg in Dokkum. Among them was Harm Engbert Blaauw. This mass execution was the largest to take place in the province of Groningen.

Willem Valk, the creator of the monument to Harm Engbert Blaauw, played an active role in the artists' resistance during the Second World War. As a member of the Central Artists' Commission, he coordinated financial support for members who had run into difficulties due to the loss of commissions (as a result of their refusal to become members of the Kultuurkamer). In the first decade after the war, Valk therefore was awarded commissions for more than 20 war memorials in Groningen and abroad."

Facts & Figures.

• Design
  Willem Valk

• District
  Selwerd

• Art type
  Monument, Freestanding sculpture

• Material
  Sandstone