Contemporary Monument Concepts in Germany

The new German Länder have a multitude of monuments, reflecting the GDR's specific culture of remembrance and its significance for the country's state-centred and ideological understanding of itself.

As well as numerous commemorative presentations of anti-Fascist struggle motivated by socialism, monuments to protagonists of communist philosophy and politics dominated public space. In addition, there were a number of monumental Soviet war memorials whose theme was the Soviet army's struggle against National Socialism. After the demise of the GDR, its monuments lost their social and ideological context. The question arose as to how to evaluate and what to do with these monuments.

Monuments to socialist anti-Fascism

Hardly a village in the territory of the former GDR did not have at least an Opfer des Faschismus (i.e. Victims of Fascism) Square or Thälmann (1) Street. There were innumerable more or less ornate public monuments in memory of the victims of the Nazi regime. Collective rituals of commemoration attempted to link paying respect to the victims with affirming a “new”, socialist and anti-Fascist social system.

Formally, a large number of the monuments take a very expressive figurative form in a style that follows on in the tradition of sculptors such as Ernst Barlach (2) or Käthe Kollwitz (3). Leading GDR artists, such as Fritz Cremer (4), Waldemar Grzimek (5) and Will Lammert (6) designed many sculptures between the late 1940s and the 1960s. Their expressiveness made it possible to approach the themes presented at an emotional level. All too often, however, works were created in this process which, while being artistically impressive, presented a politically-desirable, usually one-dimensional historical interpretation that faded out the highly-nuanced history of suppression and resistance. The monuments were intended to establish a clear link between anti-Fascist resistance and self-affirmation of the socialist social model. Regardless of this issue, however, many outstanding works of art are to be found among them that continue to hold great fascination. One example is Fritz Cremer's sculpture Deutschland bleiche Mutter (i.e. Germany Pale Mother) near Berlin Cathedral, made between 1961 and 1965.

Monumental presentations of victorious communism

There were also a number of huge monuments which were intended to show the public space as a forum for communism, which would ultimately prevail. They did so by representing the intellectual fathers of communist ideology and leading socialist politicians. Some outstanding monuments were created in cooperation with Soviet artists. The monument to Ernst Thälmann in Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district dating back to the 1980s, the oversize bust of Karl Marx in Chemnitz city centre of 1978 (both by Lev Kerbel) or the Lenin monument by Nikolai Tomski on the former Lenin Square in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain, which was inaugurated in 1970, are some works worth mentioning here. After the peaceful revolution in 1989, these monuments to the protagonists of the socialist ideal were the subject of serious debate to a much greater extent than the anti-Fascist monuments, which were only the subject of serious dispute in individual cases. Thus, in many cases, for example, it was a “Political Monuments Commission” appointed especially for the purpose by the various municipalities that had to decide whether to preserve or remove many such monuments. The Marx monument in Chemnitz was retained and to this day remains one of the city's biggest attractions. In the summer of 2008, the monument was veiled as part of a temporary art event staged by the Chemnitz New Saxon Gallery in cooperation with Linz Arts University and Zwickau University of Applied Sciences. The demolition of the Lenin monument in Berlin in 1991, on the other hand, was certainly the best-publicised case of post-revolution iconoclasm.This highly-symbolic event is remembered to this day in the city's collective memory and was alluded to, for example, in the final sequence of the feature film Good-Bye, Lenin!

Soviet war memorials

The situation regarding the large Soviet war memorials and military cemeteries in the territory of the former GDR and in the Western part of Berlin was different. These sites were created after the end of the Second World War under the direct orders of the Soviet force of occupation according to designs by Soviet artists, and they remained under the supervision of the Soviet army until the demise of the GDR. In spite of their monumentality, which is alien to today's viewers, they are still part of the monumental heritage in the territory of the former GDR which is of the greatest historical interest on account of their representative architecture and their visual presentation in sculpture of their Stalinist interpretation of the Soviet victory over Hitler's Fascism. The preservation of these monuments under the supervision of the German government was one of the matters provided for in an agreement on the modalities of the withdrawal of the Soviet troops of occupation in the 1990s between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The agreement guaranteed the preservation and restoration of the monuments in Berlin-Treptow, Berlin-Schönholz, Berlin-Tiergarten and on the Seelower Höhen in eastern Brandenburg, in the Saxon town of Zeithain and in Neubrandenburg. The restoration of the Treptow monument reflects this government responsibility in exemplary fashion.

How GDR-era monuments are dealt with today

A differentiated debate is required on how to deal with GDR-era monuments today, with the focus on placing the GDR in its historical context. Immediately after the peaceful revolution, the loss of a social and ideological context created a vacuum which led to many monuments initially being in serious danger in the first years after 1989. The explosiveness of the political and social paradigm shift manifested itself above all in the debate on the demolition or maintenance of communist monuments, which did lead to the removal of a number of monuments in the first years following the peaceful revolution. Due to the specific agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Commonwealth of Independent States, however, the Soviet monuments under the special protection of the state were excluded from this debate. A specifically political evaluation and devaluation of GDR-era monuments is meanwhile receding into the background, i.e. their value as monuments is no longer associated primarily with their political message. Rather, the time that has passed since the peaceful revolution enables increasingly differentiated approaches to be taken to these monuments, enabling them to become chapters in the history of monuments and the cultural history of state remembrance and commemoration for visitors in their own right.

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(1) Ernst Thälmann (1886-1944): Chairman of the Communist Party of Germany, arrested in 1933 after Hitler seized power and murdered by the SS in 1944.
(2) Ernst Barlach (1870-1938): Expressionist sculptor, graphic artist and writer
(3) Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945): Graphic artist and sculptor, one of the best-known women artists of the 20th century
(4) Fritz Cremer (1906-1993): Sculptor and graphic artist, emigrated to East Berlin in 1950; he created works including the Buchenwald monument, the monument at the Mauthausen concentration camp, the monument to the Spanish fighters in Berlin and the monument at the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
(5) Waldemar Grzimek (1918-1984): Sculptor, grew up in Berlin, created works including a group of sculptures for the Sachsenhausen concentration camp memorial site (1959/60)
(6) Will Lammert (1892-1957): Sculptor and draughtsman, fled from the Nazis to France and then to the Soviet Union, lived in the GDR from 1951 onwards. Created works including the monument at the Ravensbrück concentration camp (1955-57), which remained unfinished on account of his death.