Welcome to Rathaus Lichtenberg, the site of Berlin’s most recent incident of “Oh sh*t. How do we deal with the past?”
Last month, a couple were getting married at the Lichtenberg town hall when they looked up and spotted a suspiciously looking Swastika-esque pattern above the front door.
“It can’t be what I think it is?” They probably said to themselves.
Well, as it turns out, yes, it was exactly what they thought it was.
The Lichtenberg town hall in East Berlin was built in 1898, but in 1937, the metalsmith Erich Metzdorf added an ornamental iron-girded Swastika to the front entrance.
In 1945, at the war’s end, the Swastika was deliberately obscured with extra crossed-through quadrants in an attempt to make the offending image less visible, but obviously, this wasn’t a slam-dunk success, as you can see in the photos above.
Fast-forward to Sept 2024, and once the story with the eagle-eyed newlyweds hit the headlines, local politicians were quick to express outrage, and they demanded that the symbol be instantly removed. However, Germany being Germany, there is a ton of bureaucratic red tape to get through first because the town hall is a protected historical building etc etc…
For now, local officials have pledged to discuss the issue further in the hope of finding a solution. (Apparently, just popping into the local DIY shop and grabbing an angle grinder would be too difficult, I presume).
In my opinion, I can definitely see how you could walk past the building and not notice the symbol, but at the same time, now that we know it’s there, why not just get rid of it and be done with it? What possible argument could you make to keep it?
In any case, I find it staggering that it took apparently 80 years for people to notice that there was a poorly-camouflaged Swastika above the front door of one of Berlin’s busiest town halls.
Slightly embarrassing for Berlin.
(This is a repost from Instagram from October 7th, 2024)