Berlin Government Wants to Honor a True Hero

Remember the removal of over 1,000 crosses at Checkpoint Charlie, which were dedicated to the victims murdered at the Berlin wall by the East German regime? What a shameful treatment of history...

Well, not all hope is lost. Berlin's left-wing government wants to honor a true hero: 

Returning to Berlin soon...

Giant Lenin statue could return to Berlin streets

BERLIN (Reuters) - Left-wing Berlin senators want to reassemble a giant statue of Russian Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that was removed from the former eastern half of the city in 1991 shortly after German reunification.

A scene showing part of the 19-metre statue being borne through the air by a helicopter featured in the 2003 hit film "Goodbye Lenin!". Today it lies buried in pieces in a forest on the outskirts of Berlin.

Tourist industry experts say the monument would appeal to many of the German capital's six million visitors each year.

"The Communist period is the most asked-after period by tourists in Berlin," said Natascha Kompatzki of Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH.

One proposal is for the granite statue to be housed in Berlin's Museum of German History, Germany's Bild newspaper said on Monday. (Hat tip James)

What's next in Berlin? A Stalin retrospective? A tribute to Erich Honecker? Naming a street after Walter Ulbricht?

The 6 million visitors each year would love it!

Update: poguemahone's comment to this posting makes me think of another great German hero whose statue would really attract the masses...

Comments

[poguemahone]

Oh c'mon guys - stop thinking small - why don't they erect the statue that will attract the most visitors...

[Leninspecht]

Remember how the wall came down? As soon as they put up that butcher, I will grab my hammer and make small pieces out of him.

@poquemahone: If they erect a statue of the moustached one (not Stalin), they should erect it right next to Lenin. They should install fountains in their mouths which vomit red-colored water, resembling blood. The water should form a small river which leads directly to the PDS' party headquarters. In this case, I could live with Lenin's statue.

[Sock Puppet of Doom]

Wow, ths is a real mind blower. Put a statue of Pol Pot and and one of Stalin next to him as well. What tools.

[jcrue]

Pathetic.

Should I be glad to have left Heidelberg so many years ago?

It seems so....

[Joe]

Well this seems to be another effort at social justice, frankly.

There are far to many statues of other famous people and none of someone so many Germans look fondly upon. He is a famous German.

I think it is an excellent idea. I am sure the government in Berlin will fully support this effort and dig deep into their budget to find the necessary funding.

This should make everyone proud to be a Berliner.

[Dennis]

What if the 6 million visitors would love to see a few Swastika flags flying over the Reichstag ? What about Hitler statue, unlike Lenin he really lived in Berlin for some time , so it would be somewhat authentic.

[JeffM]

@ Dennis

Hitler not only lived in Berlin for years; he loved it so much he refused to leave it even when the entire Red Army was after him. THAT is commitment.

JeffM

[Zyme]

lol a Hitler statue in Berlin - that would be something!

i remember those reports from madame taussauds - hitler`s head seemed to attract every german visiting that show!
we ll need a new constitution though - unless the current one is kicked out, we wont be allowed to create a hitler statue in berlin.

[Thomas (aka The Hooded Avenger)]

or a Göbbels-Platz, a Himmler-Allé or what about a Göring Zepperlin Tour of Berlin - now that they are at it anyway.

[erp]

How about a new MM docomentary about the good old days of WW2. Maybe this will finally convince Jews in the U.S. to move on from the Democrat/Liberal party and help Bush combat this craziness worldwide.

Strolls down memory lane can be pretty painful.

Can Saddam Hussein's statue redux be far behind.

[Van Helsing]

Russia's communist conquerors weren't the most gracious guests. This is like China putting up a statue of Hirohito.

[PacRim Jim]

Germans have learned to love being lashed. Must relieve their conscience.

[Tom Penn]

They should just go ahead and erect a top ten tribute to genocidal maniacs at the Checkpoint Charlie station.

[grlzjustwant2havefun]

But either W or FDR would be #1 or #2 and Truman would most probably be #3, Tom.

[lemmy]

And to think that 'German hero' was an Austrian import.

Globalization has been around a long time!

[lemmy]

Of course, Lenin's connection with Germany is, some might say, significant.

In the midst of World War One and while Imperial Germany was at war with Imperial Russia, Germany cut a deal with Lenin and gave him free passage from Switzerland.

The rest, as they say, is history. And about 100 million dead.

[Tomaž Štih]

That's interesting. According to the same people one thousand crosses were Disneyfication of Berlin and erecting giant statue of great criminal as a tourist attraction is not?

[James]

Excellent point Tomaž!

[Hagel]

Isn't this capitalisms greatest revenge? Putting up a statue of Lenin for profit?

so would you rather let statue rot than put it into a museum?

[FreeFalcon]

Well, this is a strange idea. I don't think that many people in the former USSR would want to erect such a statue in their home town, and it's not because it's forbidden or anything. It's because Lenin simply does not cause any good feelings, he is widely regarded as a moron that led his country to the greatest catastrophy ever. I don't really understand why Germans should feel differently. However, there are strange things on earth. A few months ago in a British university student room I saw posters denouncing the unification of Germany. Some people in the UK would like to see Germany divided.

[poguemahone]

A statue of Lenin....let it rot thank you

[Sigmund Kapkiner]

"A few months ago in a British university student room I saw posters denouncing the unification of Germany. Some people in the UK would like to see Germany divided. "

Not only in the UK, I would love to see Germany divided again and I would rebuild the wall with my own hands.

[Steve]

Oooooo!!!! This is a stroke of genius on the part of the Berlin government!

After they put back the Lenin statue, they can add new attractions to further entertain those 6 million tourists, and bring in even more visitors! Here are my ideas--feel free to add your own!!

1. Berlin can work out a deal with Disney, where instead of Disneyland's "Hall of Presidents", Berlin can put in a "Hall of Commisars"! Imagine the tourist potential of hourly shows featuring animatronic versions of Lenin, Stalin, Hoenecker and other heroes of the German left, sharing their views on the decadence of the West, the eventual triumph of global communism, the glories of the proletarian life and most of all their wisdom on the proper place of human rights in the worker's state!! To jazz things up further and show the continued relevance of leftist thinking, you could end each performance with an animatronic Gerhart Schroeder rolling out on stage to kick the animatronic George W. Bush in the butt!! This attraction will be especially popular with American tourists!

2. A small portion of the Berlin Wall can be rebuilt, complete with barbed wire, searchlights and guard towers. Then, you can outfit busloads of tourists with those laser tag vests that flash and beep when you are shot. Now you have the tourists try to "get over the wall" while guards in the towers shoot at them with machine guns! (using blanks and those laser tag beams--sadly, we can't provide a truly authentic recreation using real bullets--after all, we want these tourists to come back to Berlin again and again!!) Any tourist who makes it "to the west" gets a free lunch in a West Berlin restaurant of his or her choice!! Those who don't make it get free tickets on the "shallow unmarked grave" ride.

3. To give tourists an idea of what life was like for so many Germany families during the communist period, families of tourists visiting Berlin will be randomly designated as being "Eastern" or "Western" and separated from eachother for the remainder of their stay in Berlin, or who knows, even longer!!!

Imagine the hilarity and historical education possibilities as children are pulled from their parents, wives from their husbands for the duration of their trip! If you want to have any chance at all of seeing them over the course of the trip, you have to go to the "state security office" (which we will have staffed by real, currently unemployed, veterans of the STASI) to try to get the proper visas and paperwork filled out. The "state security office" will only issue a very limited number of these visas, far fewer than the number of separated tourists. Those who can't get the visas will be told things like "We have no record of your wife", "your daughter is in Leipzig, but that is a restricted zone for Westerners and you can't see her" and "your husband was declared a counter-revolutionary and taken into custody by our security services". Think of the appreciation of Germany's communist era that will be created as a few lucky family members who thought they were spending a week in Berlin are actually loaded on trains and sent to the "state security office" camp in Siberia, for a few months of outdoor excercise cutting down trees and working open pit mines, sleeping under the stars or in shabby huts shared with 50 other members of other separated families, fine "gulag cuisine" meals and random violence and political indoctrination from their "camp counselors"!! To add a further note of realism to the experience, bribery of state security office visa officials and camp counselors will be encouraged.

4. The "informer ride". Groups of tourists are approached by the staff of the state security office and asked to surveil and inform on eachother! As members of the group denounce eachother for "counter-revolutionary" activities, the circle of remaining politically reliable tourists gets smaller and smaller. The last politically reliable informer left gets a free weekend at an authentic Soviet-era dacha outside Berlin! If the final informer manages to implicate a close family member on the way to victory, he is given one of those East German cars (a Trabi?) in addition to his free stay at the dacha!!

I personally am excited by the possibilities I see here! If it weren't a sign of my capitalist moral decay, I would be willing to invest in "German-Commyland"!

[James]

The sad truth is that Germany doesn't have heros.

[Don Miguel]

"Not only in the UK, I would love to see Germany divided again and I would rebuild the wall with my own hands."

Reminds me of the Dutch comic (whose name I can't remember) who suggested after the Berlin Wall came down that the Dutch government buy it and rebuild it on the Dutch/German border.

[lost one]

@Steve
You are frigging brilliant. They totally should hire you as a consultant.

[Simon]

This time they've gone too far. There is only one option now: The day they put up this monster, 1000 people with hammers should be ready. Imagine: TV cameras from all over the world showing German citizens getting rid of the symbol of communism again. The city administration will not dare to intervene and do what even Honecker did'nt dare to do. Simon sez: Bring it down!
I was too young in '89, but I won't miss the chance this time. We should start organizing right now.

[poguemahone]

The KZ's are important to retain as a reminder and lesson

Yet I see no need for any statues of say a KZ Commandant to go up in Berlin

face it - this is yet another example of

Communism = cool

Why on earth must we "never forget" the Holocaust ( and we certainly must not! ) and yet its cool to wear a Hammer and Sickle t-shirt?

[Cousin Dave]

At this rate, I expect that any day now, someone in Berlin will open a night club and call it "The Gas Chamber". The club will feature hundreds of shower heads on the ceiling, from which fog will spray periodically, and the staff will be trained to slump and collapse on the floor whenever this happens. It will be very trendy and fashionable.

[hermanng]

Looks like Germany turned into an asylum, and the craziest inmates are running it.

This from a German citizen who is about to get his American citizenship.

[americanbychoice]

@ herrmang
Congratulations,
I am sure you can see by my screen name that I am a fellow naturalized citizen who was originally from Germany.

[Tom Penn]

Steve, good stuff. German Commyland should negotiate to use "It's a Small World" for the theme song of the informer ride.

[Peter P. Haase]

@August

You wrote,"This time they've gone too far. There is only one option now: The day they put up this monster, 1000 people with hammers should be ready".

I noticed you differentiated carefully and correctly between "should be" and "will be". That would be nice but I, for one, very much doubt it.

There were many opportunities for Germans during the past sixty years to get off their butt and stand up for their history and/or their country. Yet, they never did unless it was to demand a higher (western) living standard or to protest against America.

Even protests which achieved re-unification were mostly born out of the desire for more material wealth than freedom itself (look at today's rise of the Left wing parties in Germany's East and the frequent "nostalgia" for the DDR.)

Nothing, not even the amputation of 1/4 of their original country by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany, was able to motivate any hint of patriotism in today's German population. They have swallowed their falsely proclaimed "collective" national "war guilt" as taught by leftist propaganda with "hook, line and sinker".

This has paralized a good people of a nation into total inaction as far the defense of their own national interests or their history is concerned.

Who knows if this can ever change in the foreseeable future?

Peter P. Haase
Boca Raton, Florida

[Doug]

"The Communist period is the most asked-after period by tourists in Berlin," said Natascha Kompatzki of Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH.

How about a Stasi handler for every tourist? I bet they'd LOVE that! And think what it would do for unemployment...