(C) Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
This story was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



German Leftists Unveil Marx Statue Alongside Lenin [1]

['Amos Chapple']

Date: 2022-08 

Communist emblems were seen on the streets of western Germany on August 27 as a Marxist political party unveiled a controversial monument.

GELSENKIRCHEN, Germany -- A statue of communist figurehead Karl Marx was unveiled on August 27 in Gelsenkirchen, a former mining town in western Germany, outside the headquarters of the country’s radical left-wing Marxist-Leninist Party (MLPD).

A crowd of some 1,200 people sang the communist anthem and some waved flags featuring the hammer and sickle as the 2.1-meter aluminum monument was unveiled alongside an existing statue to Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin that had been installed in 2020. According to the MLPD, the custom-made Marx statue cost $50,000 to make and install and was funded through donations. Karl Marx (1818-83) was a radical German economic theorist whose writings served as an inspiration for the 1917 communist takeover of Russia and the subsequent Soviet Union.

Estonia, Poland, and Latvia have torn down Soviet-era statues in recent days amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, but MLPD party leader Gabi Fechtner insisted to RFE/RL that links drawn between the Soviet Union and the Kremlin’s attempted war of expansion into Ukraine are unfair. “They use this as a reason to tear down monuments to Lenin or to the Great Patriotic War (World War II). But [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is a contradiction to socialism, Stalin, and Lenin,” she claimed. “So these monuments should remain in place.”

Ruth Plotzer held a sign during the unveiling saying, “Shame on you!!!” before being jostled out of the crowd and harassed by several people. She staged the lone protest because, she said, “I’m against a party that stands for communism in a democratic state,” adding that the German Marxists “enjoy all the benefits of living in a democratic society, then go and preach communism.”

Fechtner says erecting the Marx monument was important, regardless of how divisive it is, because “we like to be contradictory,” adding: “Contradiction is what keeps us alive and moves us forward.”

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.rferl.org/a/germany-marx-statue-unveiled-soviet-union-lenin/32007216.html

Published and (C) by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Content appears here under this condition or license: By permission of RFE/RL.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/rferl/