How should we deal with monuments to Bismarck, for example? – Culture

Opinions differ on Bismarck. That was already the case at the beginning of the 20th century, when a statue of the Reich Chancellor, more than 34 meters high, was erected on a hill in the port of Hamburg. Merchants and the bourgeoisie wanted to preserve the memory of the founder of the empire. Many of the workers, who had been persecuted by Bismarck until recently, could not do much with the overwhelming hero worship. And aesthetically, too, the positions were at odds: while the art historian Aby Warburg called the monument “simply grandiose, plastic and yet visionary outstanding”, the founding director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle Alfred Lichtwark etched from a “puppet in gigantic dimensions”. To this day, the Hamburg monument separates rather than brings together. And that’s just as well.

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