GDR Monuments in Unified Germany

Abstract

In April 1970, East Germany’s leader Walter Ulbricht unveiled a 63-foot red granite statue of Lenin in East Berlin. The statue commemorated the Soviet leader’s hundredth birthday and symbolized German-Soviet amity.1 Twenty years later, the statue became a new kind of symbol in the process of German unification. After the fall of the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED), and the beginning of the unification process between East and West Germany, politicians and ordinary citizens debated which objects and legacies of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) had a legitimate place in unified Germany. The Lenin statue and its eventual removal marked the first stage in this debate. The following chapter draws on reports and records from the Berlin Senate and its subcommittees as well as on contemporary accounts to show how GDR monuments, in particular the Lenin Monument (Lenindenkmal) and the Ernst Thalmann Memorial (Ernst-Thalmann-Denkmal), were transformed from state symbols of the GDR to actual physical embodiments of GDR history and everyday life. At these sites, former citizens of East and West Germany, both now citizens of a united Germany, gathered to protect these monuments in order to advocate a post-Wende German identity that continued to reflect East Germans’ lived experiences and their contribution to the identity of a newly united country.