Kategorie: Sachsen (English)

Leipzig’s spark extinguished

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„From the spark the flame will strike“ was the slogan of the Decembrists, who were the first to fight the tsarist regime in the 19th century. Lenin was inspired by it when he worked in exile in 1900 on the publication of a newspaper to unite the Russian workers‘ movement. It was given the title „Iskra“ (Engl. „Spark“) and was initially published in a small print house near Leipzig. In the former building of this print office, the first permanent museum exhibition on Lenin outside the Soviet Union was created in GDR times. Weiterlesen →

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The NVA glass painting

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The central figure of the four-part glass painting is a soldier of the GDR-Army (NVA) next to the state symbol, a golden wreath of ears of corn with a hammer and a compass. On the right side Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels can be seen, while on the left a side portrait of Lenin appears in front of a sea of red flags. From the thematic point of view, it could be a typical work of art of the GDR, especially since it is located on a former barracks of the NVA. However, a closer look raises doubts, because both the sketchy style and the deplorable quality of the colors do not fit the art historical context. Weiterlesen →

Leipzig’s monumental Lenin in Pirna

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How Germany’s largest bust of Lenin ended up in the Saxon district town of Pirna three decades after the reunification is one of the many surprising chronicles of German monuments to Lenin. The bronze sculpture, two and a half meters tall, two meters wide and weighing nearly four tons, was erected in 1981 in front of the Kremlin-like Soviet pavilion at the Old Exhibition Center in Leipzig. It is a work of art by sculptor Georgij Neroda and a copy of the world’s largest bust, a bust of Lenin by Neroda in Ulan-Ude, Siberia. It shows Lenin with slightly Asian features and a friendly look. Weiterlesen →

The Lenin Statue of the Socialist Youth Organization

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In the permanent exhibition „Our History – Dictatorship and Democracy after 1945“ in the Zeithistorisches Forum Leipzig there is a larger-than-life statue of Lenin. However, not much is known about this black statue made of zinc alloy. Neither its creator, nor the year of its erection, nor its former location are documented; all that is known is that it came from the holdings of the socialist youth organization Free German Youth (FDJ). Weiterlesen →

Grandfather Lenin

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The sitting Lenin from Bischofswerda looks grandfatherly. With a serene posture and a light smile, he looks contemplatively to the side. In his left hand he holds a book and marks the page with his index finger, as if after a short pause for thought he wanted to read on. In contrast to many of Lenin’s heroic representations, Manfred Wagner created this calm, reflexive figure in 1970. He was interested in presenting the person behind the hero. Weiterlesen →

Dresden: Lenin statue given away, mural restored

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In 1974 Dresden received the second largest German Lenin statue, a 120-ton monument in red granite showing Lenin marching forward followed by two comrades. After the fall of Communism, the statue was removed from its former location and given to the private collection of an art collector from southern Germany, where it still stands today, dismantled into many pieces. The mural „The Path of the Red Flag“, which was made between 1968 and 1969 and depicts Lenin among other communist thinkers and revolutionaries, had a better luck: The thirty-metre long and ten-metre high work of art was put under protection and recently completely restaured. It is now shining in all its splendour again right in the centre of Dresden. Weiterlesen →

Lenin’s spectacular comeback

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The chronicle of the Lenin-monument in Großenhain in Sachsen resembles the plot of a Hollywood film. After the German reunification, the 4,80-metre-high concrete block weighing over ten tonnes was dismantled and hidden in a secret operation with the intention of preserving it from a possible destruction. For 25 years, the colossal monument was considered „disappeared“ until its surprising comeback in 2017 to be re-erected in front of the local Bunker Museum. Weiterlesen →

Visiting Karl Marx

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In June 1990 the city of Chemnitz, which had been renamed to Karl-Marx-Stadt in the 50s, got back its former name. Nevertheless, Karl Marx is still nowadays one of the biggest icons in the city’s landscape, especially because of the 7,10 meter high bust standing in front of a giant panel where translations into different languages of the famous sentence from the Communist Manifest: “Workers of the world, unite!” are placed. It is the second biggest bust in the world, only surpassed by the sculpture of Lenin’s head in the Russian city of Ulan-Ude. Besides this, in Chemnitz there are still some other Socialist monuments to see: Walking through the streets, one can meet Engels, Thälmann, German antifascist soldiers, who fought in the Spanish Civil War, and also Lenin. Weiterlesen →