Housed in a former munitions depot in a fortress on the outskirts of Berlin is an exhibition like no other: a veritable car boot sale of statues - damaged, dismantled or dumped - dating from medieval times to the Nazis to communism. Unveiled: Berlin and Its Monuments has for the past eight years cast an unvarnished light on German history. Yet almost no Berliners have heard of it.
I am standing in the courtyard of the citadel at Spandau, a place that has had many purposes since its first recorded mention in 1197, few of them reassuring. From the late 16th century, it became a garrison city. During the Third Reich it housed research into the nerve gases tabun and sarin. After the Second World War, Spandau became synonymous with the detention of one man: Rudolf Hess. On his death in 1987, the prison was demolished. The spot where it sat is now a supermarket.
The citadel's director, Urte Evert, has been hoovering up statues nobody wants, hidden or left in warehouses. A touchscreen map shows where the monuments were originally located. Many were in Berlin's central park, Tiergarten: among them, statues of Friedrich Wilhelm III and his wife, Queen Luise (the only woman on display), generals, or thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, and the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.
This story is from the March 01, 2024 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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This story is from the March 01, 2024 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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