Friend of Democracy,
If you've ever been to Chemnitz, you've probably seen this statue (maybe not when a bus was passing by ;-) ).
It is a Karl Marx statue that was intended to be demolished in 1990, following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
At that time, the necessary construction machinery was lacking to remove the massive head from its pedestal (the head alone is 7.10 meters high; with the pedestal, the monument reaches over 13 meters). Later, the decision was changed, and the second-largest freestanding portrait bust in the world was retained (the largest being the Lenin head in Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Russian republic of Buryatia in Siberia).
So the monument became a memorial. A memorial to commemorate the horrors of the GDR dictatorship.
Today, the statue is also a landmark of Chemnitz, the fourth-largest city in East Germany (after Berlin, Leipzig, and Dresden), which was called Karl-Marx-Stadt from 1953 to 1990.
I was in Chemnitz this weekend. It is a vibrant city. Economically thriving, green, migrant, and the European Capital of Culture (together with the two border towns of Nova Gorica, Slovenia, and Gorizia, Italy).
Currently, "Tanz | Moderne | Tanz," an international festival for contemporary dance, is taking place in Chemnitz. Yesterday, there was a performance in front of the Karl Max Memorial (I took the picture above, but you can’t see them dancing in the photo because of the bus driving by; sorry, I just like to do a little art myself;-)).
Is there a more beautiful way to celebrate freedom than dancing on the remnants of a dictatorship?
See you in Democracy,
Johannes Eber