Stalin Statue (Berlin)

The Berlin Stalin statue (German: Stalindenkmal) was a larger-than-life bronze portrayal of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. A Komsomol delegation had presented the sculpture to the East Berlin government on the occasion of the Third World Festival of Youth and Students in 1951. The monument was formally dedicated on 3 August 1951 after temporarily placement at a location on a newly designed and impressive boulevard, Stalinallee (today Karl-Marx-Allee), being constructed at the time in what was then the Berlin district of Friedrichshain. Stalin monuments were generally removed from public view by the leadership of the Soviet Union and other associated countries in the years following the disavowal of the Stalinist dictatorship. In Berlin the statue and all street signs designating Stalinallee were hastily removed one night in a clandestine operation and the street was renamed. The bronze sculpture was smashed and the pieces were recycled.

Stalinallee, formerly the Große Frankfurter Straße, had been badly damaged in World War II and was renamed on Stalin’s birthday, 21 December 1949, in honor of the Soviet head of state. The newly designed street was a political statement in a post-war reconstruction effort starting in 1951 and comprised an imposing tree-lined boulevard with shops, entertainment venues, gastronomy, and especially monumental new apartment blocks. These were to be constructed by and for workers and contain luxuries unknown in the previous cramped working-class flats in buildings destroyed in the war.

The 4.80 meter high bronze statue showed the Soviet head of party and state in a typical military pose with a uniform and medals, in his left hand a scroll. The slightly conical three-meter high pedestal, variously described as being made of marble, concrete or sandstone, was placed on a masonry platform. The temporary location between Andreasstrasse and Koppenstrasse was across the street from a sports hall built in 1951 for the World Festival of Youth and Students (the building was demolished in 1972).

Which Soviet artist created the statue is a matter of debate among experts. According to one source it was presumably created in the atelier of the Soviet sculptor Grigory Postnikov (Григорий Николаевич Постников, 1914–1978). Other sources name Nikolai Tomsky and Sergey Merkurov, the latter because of similarities with a statue erected in 1937 in Moscow. A Russian source states that Tomsky created the monument.

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