Håbets dør

Lidt nord for Marselisborgmonumentet står en statue af Bernhard Sindberg med åbne arme og front ud over bugten.

Sindberg blev født i Aarhus i 1911 og havde allerede tidligt en så stor udlængsel, at han som 16-årig tog hyre på et skib mod New York. Udlængslen tog ham siden helt til Nanjing i Kina, hvor han blev ansat som vagt ved en cementfabrik.

Da japanerne i december 1937 erobrede Nanjing, fulgte seks ugers massakre, hvor op mod 300.000 blev myrdet, og op til 80.000 kvinder og piger blev voldtaget. Sindberg og en tysk kollega hejste både Dannebrog og hagekorset over den nu forladte fabrik, som japanerne herefter gik udenom. Fabrikken blev herefter et tilflugtssted for op til 10.000 flygtninge, som blev skånet for massakrerne. Sindberg blev siden en folkehelt i Kina.

Statuen, der i Kina kaldes ‘Håbets port’ (også kendt som ‘Håbets dør’), er en venskabsgave fra Nanjing kommune og Det Kinesiske Kulturcenter i København og blev i 2019 afsløret af H.M. Dronning Margrethe II.

Statuen er udført som et samarbejde mellem billedkunstnerne Shang Rong og Fu Licheng, begge fra Kina, samt danske Lene Desmentik.

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Just north of Marselisborgmonumentet (the Marselisborg Monument) stands a statue of Bernhard Sindberg with open arms, facing the bay.

Sindberg was born in Aarhus in 1911 and had such a strong longing for the world that at the age of 16, he signed on as a sailor bound for New York. His wanderlust eventually took him all the way to Nanjing, China, where he was employed as a guard at a cement factory.

When the Japanese forces captured Nanjing in December 1937, it marked the beginning of six weeks of massacre during which up to 300,000 people were killed and as many as 80,000 women and girls were raped.

Sindberg and a German colleague raised both the Danish flag and the swastika above the now-abandoned factory, which led the Japanese to avoid the site. The factory subsequently became a refuge for up to 10,000 people who were spared from the atrocities. Sindberg later became a national hero in China.

The statue, known in China as The Gate of Hope (also referred to as The Door of Hope), is a gift of friendship from the City of Nanjing and the Chinese Cultural Center in Copenhagen. It was unveiled in 2019 by HM Queen Margrethe II.

The statue was created in collaboration between visual artists Shang Rong and Fu Licheng, both from China, and Danish artist Lene Desmentik.