BERLIN CALENDAR: ENTER LUTHER
Today in Berlin: June 11, 1895
In well over two decades spent in Vienna, Robert Musil did a lot of walking. Strolling through the city - keen observer of its goings-on that he was - and passing one immortalised, stone-cold hero after another, he came to a simple but profound conclusion: "The remarkable thing about monuments is that one does not notice them. There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument."1
The pre-war Berlin was very much like Musil’s Vienna: with its roughly 300 major monuments (96 of them in the Tiergarten alone!), you could mark your itinerary from one statue to another. As people, indeed, did. Children were taught the name of the nearest marble or bronze heroic effigy to help them find the way back home in case they should be lost.
But otherwise the streetscape Puppen (German for dolls) were passed by with the same indifference as water pumps and benches.
Until they vanished and their loss would be mourned as crushing. As robbing the city of its original “self”. Something that happened in Berlin a lot. Here’s one such bronze hero who, however, returned, but - as the city around him - could never become what he was.
On this day in 1895 the Lutherdenkmal (Luther Memorial) was unveiled on Berlin's Neuer Markt.