Monuments, like street names, often become bones of bitter contention following a change in regime. East Berlin had its full share of physical testimonials to communist heroism—a motley collection of pillars, busts, statues, and shrines, most of them as aesthetically unappealing as the neighborhoods in which they stood. Some inspired little affection even among GDR patriots and could be removed by the new powers in Berlin without much controversy. Few protested, for example, when the authorities ordered the elimination of the monuments to GDR border guards who had died at the Berlin Wall. It was quite otherwise with the proposed dismantling in 1991 of a sixty-three-foot-tall granite statue of Lenin, which had been dedicated by Walter Ulbricht in 1970 on Lenin’s hundredth birthday. Claiming that it was totally unacceptable for Berlin to honor a “despot and murderer,” the Diepgen government insisted that the statue be removed. A group of East Berliners, many of them residents of the Leninplatz neighborhood in Prenzlauer Berg where the statue stood, rallied to the defense of the monument on grounds that it was an integral part of GDR history. As one of them said: “For me, it’s not about Lenin, but rather about demonstrating our power and not letting ourselves be pushed around.” The easterners held protest demonstrations and draped the statue with a huge sash saying, “No Violence!” The PDS, meanwhile, demanded that if Lenin went, so must the Victory Column in West Berlin, which was equally “political.” In the end, the Victory Column stayed and Lenin went—ignominiously broken up into pieces and deposited in a gravel pit. Leninplatz was then renamed Platz der Vereinten Nationen (United Nations Square), an ironic choice for a place that had now come to symbolize discord and division.
The fate of another GDR-commissioned monument, a huge bronze bust of the German Communist leader Ernst Thälmann, also became the focal point of an identity struggle in reunited Berlin. Unveiled by Honecker in 1986, the sculpture was a latter-day socialist equivalent of Wilhelm II’s Siegesallee, a triumph of bombastic kitsch. (In a modern touch, Thälmann’s nose was heated to prevent snow from accumulating there, but little could be done about the pigeons who left their signature on his bald head.) When the Berlin government proposed eliminating this monstrosity in 1993, a cry of protest went up from Ossis still smarting from their loss of Lenin. This time they managed to save their hero, largely because the bust was so big and solid that it would have cost too much to break down and cart away. The argument was also made that this work deserved preservation not as a political statement but as a classic example of GDR iconography—a historical relic of considerable value. Those who found the monument offensive could always smear it with graffiti, which, in fact, they did not hesitate to do. By the mid-1990s Thälmann looked less heroic than pathetic—a perfect symbol for the defunct regime that had claimed him as one of its secular saints.
The removal of politically tainted street names and monuments was just the beginning of a much broader campaign to root out the remnants of the Marxist system in the former GDR. The new eastern states harbored tens of thousands of state-owned factories, stores, farms, and other assets that, in the eyes of united Germany’s rulers, had no place in a free-market economy. Actually, this conclusion had already been reached by the Modrow government, which, in March 1990, had set up a privatization agency called the Treuhand to sell off some of the state-owned properties. Under East German administration, however, the Treuhand had managed to dispose of only 170 companies. After unification the agency came under the control of a government determined to make privatization a priority. The Treuhand quickly became the largest holding company in the world, with 8,000 companies, 40,000 plants, 6 million employees, and 62,000 square kilometers of farms, forests, and other real estate. Its holdings were particularly extensive in East Berlin, where it was the largest landlord. Appropriately, it set up shop in the city’s largest office building, the former Nazi Air Ministry and “House of Ministries” in GDR days. Most of the staff were Wessis, as was the new director, Detlev Rohwedder, a former chief of Hoesch Steel and a legendary downsizer.
