BERLIN CALENDAR: MOTHER RUSSIA REMEMBERS
Today in Berlin: May 8, 1949
On 8 May 1949 in Berlin, the colossal Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park was unveiled on the site of the former artificial lake created in 1896 for the Great Berlin Industrial Exposition. Although “unveiled” might be a bit of a stretch: the site covers 10 hectares of land.
The memorial’s central element is an over 30-metre-tall (counting the base) statue of Der Befreier (The Liberator) by a Soviet artist, Yevgeny Vuchetich. Vutchetich was a member of the creative team led by architect Yakov S. Belopolski. Together with painter Alexander A. Gorpenko and art historian, critic and engineer Sarra Samuilovna Valerius (she and Vuchetich would marry afterwards), the team was responsible for designing and overseeing the building of the memorial.
They created what was the largest monument to fallen Soviet soldiers (at least until two decades later the “Mother Russia” statue rose above Stalingrad, now Volgograd)…