Kategorie: Berlin (English)

The Lenin Stele from the Special Armaments Camp

Kommentar hinterlassen

Many Lenin monuments on abandoned Soviet sites are highly endangered. Despite their historical value as authentic contemporary documents of the Soviet Army in Germany, there is usually a lack of people or institutions as well as financial resources to ensure their protection. Therefore, every rescue of such a monument deserves to be celebrated. The last one to be saved is the 3-ton Lenin Stele from Himmelpforter Heide, which is now at the German-Russian Museum in Berlin-Karlshorst, where it will soon be re-erected. Weiterlesen →

Werbung

Lenin in the Olympic Village

Kommentar hinterlassen

The Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 were held during the Nazi regime and the National Socialist regime used them to project a positive, modern image of itself. The Olympic Stadium in Berlin-Westend was built for the sporting competitions and 18 kilometres to the west, in the Brandenburg Elstal, the accommodation for the international athletes was erected. 80 years have passed and now part of the rotten complex of the Olympic Village is being redeveloped into luxury flats, while the rest is left to decay. Among the abandoned buildings is the Hindenburghaus, named in honour of the former Field Marshal and President of the Reich, a cultural centre where a Lenin mural can still be found today. And of course, one might ask how this Lenin painting came to be placed in a sports complex built by the Nazis. Weiterlesen →

Lenin‘s head

Kommentar hinterlassen

head

On April 29th 2016 the exhibition „Unveiled – Berlin and its monuments” was solemnly inaugurated at Zitadelle Spandau. Its main exhibit is a two-meter large head of Lenin with a weight of 3,5 tonnes. It is made of red granite and used to be part of East Germany’s biggest Lenin-monument. After the reunification, the statue was banished from Berlin, dismantled and buried in a forest nearby. This head was especially dug up for this exhibition and attracted a lot of popular and media attention. The explanation for this high interest was not only the figure of Lenin itself, but especially the amazing history of this monument, which could serve as the script for a Hollywood-movie. Weiterlesen →

White Lenin

2 Kommentare

White Lenin

A Berlin tourist guide once told me, that the first place he visited with his groups from the USA was the Soviet War Memorial: “So they can see, that in Berlin they can to expect the unexpectable!” In fact, from a Western perspective the monument is quite disconcerting or even a little bit bizarre: The nationalistic pathos and the communist symbolism create a flourishing tribute to Soviet patriotism, which many would not expect to find in the heart of Europe in the 21th Century. Weiterlesen →

The big windowpane

Kommentar hinterlassen

HU_trium

ENGLISH

3HUWhen he was young, Lenin had to read and investigate in far stranger places than a university library. From December 1895 until February 1897 he stayed 14 month in a remand prison accused of political agitation, so he had to carry on with his researches behind bars. It’s been told that his first political essays were written there with invisible ink. In February 1897 he was proscribed for three years to the little town of Shushenskoje in Eastsibira (approximately 600 km from the nearest train station), where he set up a little study-room in the little house, in which he lived under constant surveillance of the police, with the purpose of continuing his investigations and his own writings. But it wasn’t until 1900, when he left Russia and began his European exile, that he was able to return to his routine of visiting libraries, in order to work quietly among the smell of old books. Weiterlesen →

A heroic rescue

2 Kommentare

Lenin_bydchantzaras1

In October of 1943 a train coming from the Russian city of Pushko arrived at the train-station of Eisleben. The wagons were filled with scrap metal bulky metallic objects, spoils of war from the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The whole shipment was meant to be taken to the Krughütte, a production plant nearby, in order to be melt down. The soviet forced laborers, which were unloading the wagons, didn’t believe their eyes, as they suddenly found in middle of bells, artillery shells and pieces of boats a three meter high statue of Lenin, made of bronze. Their national hero had come to support them in these hard times – it was a miracle! They decided to hide the statue under a mountain of scrap and saved it from destruction. Weiterlesen →

The Tank Division in Bernau

Kommentar hinterlassen

Mausuleum

ENGLISH

HauptgebaudeNow that he was relegated from the central spots of the capital, Lenin has got to hang around in remote ruins. In Bernau there are two parcels with big building blocks, which were the headquarter of the Heeresbekleidungsamts – something like a national clothing agency – during the Third Reich. After the war, the Red Army took over the place. The 90. Armoured Division was the last group to use the installations, before they were abandoned in the year of 1993: Where once was a direct train track, in order to deliver asap the new fancy uniforms or the most modern weapons, trees and bushes are growing now completely unwound. And in the buildings, in which generals were discussing the posible development of a third world war, now prevails the decay and a grave silence, which is only interrupted by some distant footsteps and you ask yourself if it’s only the echo of your own ones or maybe the ones of a soldier, which was left behind… Weiterlesen →