Post-fallism

This paper explores the afterlife of the fallen Lenin Monument, which once stood since 1970 on the Leninplatz in the former East Berlin. In 1991, the monument was dismantled into 129 pieces and buried under a sand hill in a forest in Müggelheim, in the far south-east of Berlin. In 2015, its head was dug out and displayed in Berlin’s Spandau Citadel at the permanent exhibition showing the city’s fallen monuments from Prussian times to today. This paper analyses architectural, urban and political effects of the re-emergence of the Lenin Monument head. It does so by looking at the debates surrounding its restoration; its form and disposition within the spatial setting of the exhibition, its encounter by and interaction with the public and its meanings. The analysis is based on the site observation and participant observation of the statue’s head within the exhibition and discourse analysis of its representation in the exhibition materials and in media. The argument is that the re-emerged part of the Lenin Monument forms a ‘counter-monument’ that challenges the political roles of both the original and the fallen monument. It contests the notion of the monument as an icon of political authority, which was the purpose of the original Lenin Monument. It also represents a way of coming to terms with the past that enables the public to critically engage with the legacy of the past authoritarian regime in contrast to the fall of the Lenin Monument, which was a means of suppressing it.