Farewell Lenin – good-bye Nikolai: two attitudes towards Soviet heritage in former East Berlin

Abstract

In Berlin, capital city of the German Democratic Republic, the most striking public monuments were commissioned, executed, and funded by the allied Soviet Union. Most of these monuments survived the spontaneous iconoclastic attacks which accompanied and followed the collapse of the socialist regime, since the target of these assaults was more often the most “hated” of Berlin monuments – the Wall. In the euphoria during the first period after the fall of the Wall, several small-scale political monuments, including busts and memorial plaques, were arbitrarily removed from barracks, embassies, schools, and public offices. At the same time, certain municipal deputies took on the entire artistic heritage on the east side of the city, and declared their firm intention to wipe all Stalinist monuments off their pedestals. The Lenin monument, however, is mere rubble, for its fate was deliberately decided by a destructive human action. There is no function ascribed to rubble, and as Augé points out, the fundamental issue is “how to get rid of it? What to build in its place?”.29 Although the last question appears to remain partially unanswered, what is clear is that the Lenin monument has not had time to age, to become history – to become a ruin.