Berlin’s largest memorials were built by Stalin. We care for and preserve them for good reason. After the attack on Ukraine, however, we do it with mixed feelings, says Gunnar Schupelius.
A victory celebration was announced for May 9 in front of the Soviet memorial in the Tiergarten. It’s actually nothing special. On this day the end of World War II is celebrated in Russia.
Russians abroad celebrate this day abroad. In Berlin, the corresponding meetings on May 9th have been a matter of course for half an eternity. But this year everything is different.
The police want to monitor the rally in the Tiergarten because there is a suspicion that the attack on Ukraine could also be celebrated there. The Russian motorcade last weekend gave rise to such fears.
The Soviet memorials are Berlin’s largest memorials. They were built on the orders of Joseph Stalin. Two gigantic bronze soldiers in the Tiergarten and in Treptower Park commemorate the victory of the Red Army over the German Wehrmacht and the end of the German war of annihilation in the East.
The cenotaphs are glorifying and frightening, as they should be. I’ve always looked at her with mixed feelings since childhood.
They convey to me a dual message of liberation and oppression. The Soviets liberated Germany, but they did not bring freedom. Instead they installed a new dictatorship.
When the GDR was at an end and the Red Army withdrew, Germany undertook to maintain the Soviet memorials at all times in the “Two Plus Four Treaty”.
Why not? We thought history had turned for the better, Russia would finally be a friendly country, peace was assured. So we regarded the maintenance of the memorials as a matter of honour.
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We saved neither money nor effort: the plant in Treptow was renovated in 2004 for eleven million euros. Even the quotes from Stalin have been regilded. That actually went a bit too far, because Stalin, along with Hitler and Mao Tse-tung, is one of the greatest mass murderers of the 20th century.
Then the tide turned. In 2008 the Russians invaded Georgia. In 2013, in Kaliningrad, Putin aimed new nuclear missiles at Berlin, in violation of all applicable treaties. In 2014 he started the first war against Ukraine.
And now, in the second Ukraine war, Russian soldiers are behaving like they did in Germany in 1945: they plunder, torture and murder. The images spread fear and terror.
Nobody knows what orders the Kremlin will give next. Terrible memories are awakened. It’s like history is coming back.
And suddenly the memorials are no longer a museum, they won’t leave us alone. Of course we will maintain and care for them, the contracts apply.
But we certainly don’t like doing it anymore, because the peace with Russia that we dreamed of and believed in no longer exists.
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