Leninplatz, Berlin, 1990– © Brian Rose

Spiegel Online International:

In a sign of how time is healing Berlin’s wounds, the city plans to dig up the giant Lenin monument it famously buried in 1991 and place it in a new museum for disgraced statues. The works will span the communist and Nazi eras and date far back into Prussian times.

Full article here.

One of the things I’ve noticed in my recent trips to Berlin is a greater acknowledgment that visitors come to Berlin to see and feel history, however painful much of it may be. For years, Nazi sites were mostly unidentified, hidden. Then the Wall was hastily removed, communist monuments ripped down. Now, there is a greater openness along with regrets about what was lost. There are serious attempts to present and interpret history such as the Topography of Terror as well as kitschy Trabi rentals and fake G.I.s posing for pictures at Checkpoint Charlie. I still haven’t made up my mind about Peter Eisenman’s Holocaust Memorial, but it is irrevocably planted–a vast field of stones–in the heart of the German capitol.