By Gunnar Schupelius
The tribute to this communist enemy of democracy must be demolished or integrated into a museum. But there is no political will in this city for this, says Gunnar Schupelius.
Anyone who drives along Greifswalder Strasse in Prenzlauer Berg and does not yet know the monument will be shocked at the sight: 14 meters high and weighing 50 tons, the head of the KPD leader Ernst Thälmann (1886-1944) made of solid copper stands there on a gigantic marble base .
You can see the fist clenched in a communist salute, above which the hammer and sickle are engraved, the worldwide symbols of the red dictatorship.
The memorial is regularly daubed with graffiti, currently it says: “Hero”, “USA should burn” and “Germany is America’s whore”. Communist splinter groups gather regularly on the former parade ground in front of the head, for example on May Day.
Everyone knows that things cannot go on like this, but there are only a few who are looking for a solution. One of them is the district councilor and chairman of the CDU Prenzlauer Berg Ost, David Paul. He was born nearby in 1989 and takes care of the neighborhood.
This place of pilgrimage for the former leader of the German communists remains a thorn in his side. “It’s unbearable,” he says, “that we’re honoring a politician whose goal it was to destroy democracy.”
Paul applied for the demolition of the monument in the district council. Thälmann did not even shy away from collaborating with the National Socialists, who were gaining strength, as he explained. That’s right, the KPD, which under Thälmann was striving for a Soviet Germany, fought together with Hitler against the Democrats in the 1920s, which hardly anyone knows today.
Paul’s application was not the first of its kind: the Berlin Senate decided to demolish it as early as 1993, and a similar decision was made later by the district assembly. But the removal seemed to be expensive and complicated, people shyed away from it or there was a lack of political will, until in 2014 the monument and the housing estate behind it were suddenly listed as a monument.
Six years later, the square in front of the monument was redesigned. After an artistic competition, orange concrete blocks were set up to invite people to linger.
The visitor can obtain information about the location via printed QR codes. But this attempt also failed: the arrangement looks shabby and worn, the concrete blocks have been smeared, nobody uses the QR codes for orientation.
The demolition request of the district councilor Paul was meanwhile rejected by a majority of the other parties. The preservation of the memorial would be “sensible as part of a memorial that clearly names the crimes of Stalinism and Ernst Thälmann,” said the district councilor of the Greens, Hannah Wettig.
Perhaps the solution would even be not to remove this monster head at all, but to keep it in its frightening size as a reminder of history and convert it into a museum that commemorates the communist tyranny.
But these words must be followed by deeds. That seems impossible. In our city not a hand moves for such an idea. So everything stays the way it is. And that’s exactly what doesn’t work.
Is Gunnar Schupelius right? Call: 030/2591 73153 or email: [email protected]
