Roman God-Like Man.

"A monument is not a descriptive account of history, but instead a historical artifact that tells a story about power."

I have a new bucket list destination: the Citadel Museum.

The eight-ton Lenin's head used to be attached to the statue of the Soviet leader that stood at Leninplatz, in East Berlin, which as you'll recall is where I worked while employed for three weeks by the parks department in the capital of the GDR in the summer of 1989.

The statue was taken down after unification in spite of neighborhood opinion in favor of it remaining, and it would appear to have been dismembered. The head was exhumed in 2015.

I highly recommend clicking through and reading the article.

The Museum Where Racist and Oppressive Statues Go to Die, by Daniela Blei (Atlas Obscura)

Germany has found ways to display problematic monuments without elevating them.

LAST YEAR, URTE EVERT RECEIVED a 400-pound church bell imprinted with a small but unmistakable swastika, and she faced a conundrum. Evert is the director of the Citadel Museum in the Berlin suburb of Spandau, and the bronze bell—cast in 1934 for the ascendant Nazi regime—hung at the nearby Evangelical Church of Hakenfelde until the astonishingly recent date of 2017. Evert hoped to add the Nazi artifact to the museum’s permanent collection of toxic monuments: busts of militaristic Prussian rulers; statues of Aryan athletes and warriors; and an eight-ton granite head of Vladimir Lenin, which took two years of political and bureaucratic wrangling to dig out of the ground. But first, Evert had to weigh the risks of exhibiting a church bell installed during the Nazi period. What would the bell represent, and what could visitors learn from it? And could it become a kind of shrine for members of far-right or neo-Nazi groups?

Evert’s job at the Citadel Museum, which is housed in the former provisions depot of a Renaissance-era fortress, is to critically examine the culture of monuments. Rather than scrubbing the area of statues that symbolize racism, antisemitism, and other forms of violence and oppression, the museum aims to contextualize the past, putting uncomfortable realities on display in productive, educational, and sometimes challenging ways.

“Inside the museum, visitors confront at eye level statues and monuments that used to represent power,” Evert says. “You can touch everything. Nothing is put on a pedestal. You can talk about what makes you mad.” Since December, the Nazi church bell has been on permanent loan. It inspired a special exhibition on Spandau’s churches under National Socialism, a collaboration between college students and the museum ...

... The idea for a museum of spurned monuments came from Andrea Theissen, the former director of the Spandau Citadel, who curated the opening in 2016. Each statue was left in the condition she received it—many were dismantled under orders from the Allies—complete with bullet holes and damage from bombs. The museum’s message is clear: A monument is not a descriptive account of history, but instead a historical artifact that tells a story about power. In a setting that invites scrutiny, visitors can study Berlin’s monuments to grasp more clearly who had power and how that power was used.

From Berlin to Budapest to New Orleans: "Historically, Confederate symbols have appeared at times of racial discord."

A concise, yet comprehensive essay about symbolism.

‘They were not patriots’: New Orleans removes monument to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, by Janell Ross (Washington Post)

NEW ORLEANS — They are all gone now. On Friday, the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee became the last of New Orleans’s four contested monuments to go, an end to more than 130 years of publicly honoring a man who embodied Southern pride and racial oppression.

Getting down to the heart of the matter:

Carol Anderson, a historian and professor of African American studies at Emory University, says that the various reasons given for defending Confederate monuments and symbols share a common underlying expectation — that even in an increasingly diverse democracy, power and influence should remain unchanged.

Speaking personally, my feeling for the "heritage" argument runs to a temperature far less than zero.

However, I'll concede to a shade of appreciation for the "landscape-defining art" defense, because while in East Berlin in 1989, I was intimately acquainted with an example of it.*

Lenin was removed shortly after German unification, and this is how it looked in 2014.

At the time, the multi-story apartment building would have been among the sleekest and most modern in East Berlin. The statue was placed to be framed by this structure, with the greenery of the adjacent public park softening the harshness of the concrete. The plaza and postwar Communist buildings facing Lenin's statue were all of a piece, flowing outward from the statue.

It may have been totalitarian, but there was a unity of purpose in design. When Lenin was toppled, there remained a pedestal with nothing, like a missing limb. You wouldn't need to know a statue stood in this spot without feeling something is missing.

Is there symbolism in omission?

A fair number of neighborhood activists opposed the statue's removal on precisely these grounds of landscape-defining art. They also made an argument worthy of reasoned consideration: we can't scrub the past entirely clean, and shouldn't try. Reminders of bad times are needed, so as to avoid their repetition.

Had the Lenin statue remained in place, would it have served as a shrine for remaining Communists? Perhaps, though it might also have been deployed in the manner chosen by the Hungarians. In 2002 while in Budapest, my tour group visited Statue Park (now apparently rebranded as Memento Park).

Memento Park in Budapest

Displayed in the Park are 42 pieces of art from the Communist era between 1945 and 1989, including allegorical monuments of “Hungarian-Soviet Friendship” and “Liberation”, as well as statues of famous personalities from the labour movement, soldiers of the Red Army and other gigantic pieces: Lenin, Marx, Engels, Dimitrov, Captain Ostapenko, Béla Kun and other “heroes” of the communist world. A favourite with visitors is the Liberation Army Soldier. A hammer-and-sickle flag in its hand and a cartridge-disc machine pistol hanging in its neck make the statue complete. This 6-meter tall statue of the evil-eyed Soviet soldier once stood on the top of Gellért Hill in central Budapest, well-seen from every direction.

When facing it, the main entrance bears the image of a monumental classicist building. Looking behind it, though, it resembles a 12-meter high, under-propped communistic scenery ? a perfect introduction into the nature of dictatorship.

The words of architect Ákos Eleőd, the conceptual designer of Memento Park serve as its motto: “This Park is about dictatorship. And at the same time, because it can be talked about, described and built up, this Park is about democracy. After all, only democracy can provide an opportunity to think freely about dictatorship. Or about democracy, come to that! Or about anything!”

Here are two photos from our visit, taken from the Tom Henderson Collection.

Ironically, the late Jim Scott (second from the right) lived in New Orleans.

For now, New Orleans will store the four Confederate monuments in an undisclosed location, due to threats made against city officials, activists, contractors and work crews involved in taking them down. City officials announced late Thursday that an unspecified water feature will replace the Lee statue, and an American flag will fly where the Davis fixture once stood. Nonprofits and government agencies will eventually be allowed to submit plans that would put the statues on private property. City Park officials will decide what will replace the Beauregard statue.

Symbolism matters, but at the same time, if we're determined not to learn lessons from 152 years ago, symbolism just might be the least of our concerns.

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* The oft-told story of how I came to be in East Germany in 1989 can be found at these links.

Pilsners with Putin: 1989 Revisited (Part One).

Pilsners with Putin: 1989 Revisited (Part Two).

Pilsners with Putin: 1989 Revisited (Part Three).

Pilsners with Putin: 1989 Revisited (Part Four).

2014 Euro Reunion Tour, Day 4: To Leninplatz and the Imbiss, 25 years later.

From 2014 back to 1989.

Throughout our two days in Berlin, I was unable to break the habit of referring to "East" and "West," even though these distinctions became moot so very long ago. On Saturday, we bought an all-day transit pass and headed for Alexanderplatz, and an appointment with ghosts.

The structural topography of eastern Berlin areas built during DDR times is distinctive and unmistakable, and will continue to be in spite of various methods, paint, architectural embellishments and newer construction. East Germany remade its Berlin zone into a showplace for a certain way of urban thinking, as the following illustrate.

The world clock stood during the 1980s. East Germans morosely noted that it showed the time in all those place they weren't allowed to go.

A short distance away, Karl Marx Allee (no, the name has not been changed) and Strausberger Platz were built in an earlier, 1950s-era totalitarian model. I've seen examples of architecture of this type scattered across the former East Bloc.

From Strausberger Platz, it's only a short walk to the site where the Lenin statue once stood. The area around it, both inside and outside Volkspark Friedrichshain, was where I worked during August, 1989. Below, a view of the building where several days were spent tidying and pruning.

Just within the Volkspark was the Imbiss where my work crew drank lunch. It has been replaced by a pleasant beer garden and year-round restaurant and small events hall. A more peaceful location to enjoy an indigenous Berliner-style wheat ale seemed unimaginable.

In Germany, beer gardens invariably boast children's play areas. It's a sane way of acknowledging that drinking beer and enjoying one's family are not mutually exclusive. However, I must admit that the placement of the cigarette machine was cause for mirth.

On Sunday, a train to Bamberg awaited.