Almost thirty years ago the Sassnitz Lenin bust was stained with red paint and wrapped in a plastic cover in the local municipal depot. Now the sculpture came on lent to Fürstenwalde, where it is part of the GDR collection of the association IFA-Freunde Trebus. Before its presentation, the Lenin head was thoroughly polished so that it can now receive visitors in its old freshness. Weiterlesen
Only fifteen minutes walk from the Rostock city harbour lies one of the most impressive revolutionary monuments in Germany. It’s the „memorial of revolutionary sailors“ erected in honour of the 1918-November Revolution. The sailors‘ uprising in Kiel was the beginning of the revolution that led to the fall of the monarchy in the German Reich and the foundation of a parliamentary democracy („Weimar Republic“). Rostock’s monument consists of two parts: a twenty-metre-long relief wall with scenes of the international labour movement and a nine-metre-high bronze sculpture of two sailors in attacking position. Weiterlesen
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
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
The story about how the biggest German Lenin-bust ended up in the GDR-museum of Pirna (Saxony) more than three decades after the reunification is another of the surprising chronicles of Lenin-monuments in Germany.
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The Soviet Officer’s House in Weimar was built in 1974 for the higher commanders of the 8th Guards Unit. It was used as a cultural center, meeting place and restaurant. Two monuments dedicated to Lenin were erected in this complex: a bust made of bronze and a stained light box. Weiterlesen
A statue, which is under monument protection, but disappears without a trace. An old and forgotten bust, which suddenly is standing at the entrance of the Volkspark. Lenin’s existence in Potsdam is a succession of mysterious incidents and even journalists, politicians and public authorities lose track of it. Weiterlesen
In April 2016 a bust of Lenin was erected only a few meters from the border between Germany and Poland. During World War II, this sculpture had been stolen by the German army in the Soviet Union and sent to Küstrin-Kietz, in order to be destroyed and reused as a raw material for the arms industry. But two workers of the scrapping facility decided to hide it, saving it from the imminent smelting. Weiterlesen
The abandoned military area of Wittstock has turned into a ghost town. Entire apartment buildings, schools, office-blocks and hangars are falling apart. In front of the former cultural center we find an image, which is rich in contrasts: Lenin is standing there with his typical statesmanlike pose, but he is mutilated and completely covered with lichen. It was not possible to get more information about this act of vandalism, but the view of this half-destroyed statue seems like an exemplary representation of the neglect of the East-German monumental landscape. Weiterlesen
LENIN IS STILL AROUND 