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Berlin's beheaded Hitler wax model to go back on display
2008-07-07
BERLIN (AFP) - The new Madame Tussauds museum in Berlin said Monday a wax figure of Adolf Hitler would go back on display once it has been repaired after a visitor ripped off its head on opening day. The statue will return to its place in the museum's history section "as soon as possible" a spokeswoman for Madame Tussaud's told AFP amid a fresh debate about whether it is appropriate to display the Nazi leader's likeness. "Adolf Hitler represents a defining moment in German history that cannot be denied," she said, adding that the display had been done "with sensitivity and respect" for people's feelings. On Saturday, minutes after the museum opened, a former policeman brushed past security and broke off the head of the statue showing a forlorn-looking Fuehrer, seated behind a desk in surroundings depicting his bunker. The 41-year-old Berliner was arrested and faces charges of causing criminal damage and bodily harm. The museum announced earlier Monday that it planned to salvage the 200,000-euro (313,000-dollar) waxwork, but denied it would be sent to London, home of the first Madame Tussauds, for repairs. It deliberated for most of the day about displaying it again. Madame Tussauds has been widely accused of poor taste and publicity-seeking for featuring Hitler in the new museum situated a stone's throw from where he committed suicide in April 1945. The line-up of historical figures also includes Albert Einstein, statesman Otto von Bismarck and former chancellor Helmut Kohl, who is considering legal steps because he is unhappy with his likeness. Berlin's state secretary for culture, Andre Schmitz, told Monday's edition of the Berliner Zeitung that showing a Hitler statue smacked of "bad taste". By contrast, few have condemned the vandalism. The former policeman, identified only as Frank L., told the press he came up with the idea over drinks with friends, who dared him to go ahead, but now regretted it. "I did not do it for money, nor for fame, though I suppose I will now be famous for a while," he told the online edition of Die Welt newspaper. "Yesterday I said I felt good, but today I am already feeling bad about what I did." Museum employee Stephan Koch, who tried to stop the man as he lurched at the statue, told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily he had repeatedly shouted "No more war!" "Then he simply ripped off the head. It looked dreadful," Koch said, adding that once the head rolled on the floor, the man calmed down. "One could see that he was proud of what he had done." The attack has generated massive coverage and commentary in the German press, with the left-leaning Tageszeitung joking that it was proof that Germans had left behind the nation's Nazi past. The centre-left Sueddeutsche Zeitung said the attack was not surprising in a city that cultivated a tradition of civil disobedience, adding that many quietly applauded it. It quoted a policeman in the capital as saying: "From a humanistic point of view, the attack was a success." Ironically Madame Tussauds had decided to place the waxwork behind a table to prevent visitors to the museum on Berlin's historic avenue Unter den Linden from damaging it or posing for photographs with it. A Hitler waxwork in the Madame Tussauds museum in London was long protected by glass after visitors began spitting at it in the 1930s.
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