Between Andreasstraße and Koppenstraße (south side)
Installation: 1951, demolition: 1971
Bronze statue: Nikolai Tomski
Bronze statue of Joseph Stalin
Today, a residential building in industrially prefabricated large panel construction with three ponds outside marks a historically significant site on Karl-Marx-Allee:
On 3 August 1951, the first monument to Joseph Stalin in Germany was unveiled here, exactly one day after the opening of the Deutsche Sporthalle directly opposite. The occasion was the start of the third World Youth Games in East Berlin.
The location of the 4.80 m-tall bronze statue of Stalin was to be temporary. The open space was intended to be the construction site for a large socialist residential block.
The substructure and plinth were built in a hastily laid out, simple park. The pine trees were intended to visually surround the monument and mask the view of a provisional cultural centre for construction workers and ruined old buildings in the background.
The sculpture of Stalin remained at its provisional location for 20 years – even after the De-Stalinisation process had begun following Nikita Khrushchev’s 1956 criticism of Stalin’s crimes against humanity.
It was not until 13 November 1961, three months after the Berlin Wall was built, that the bronze statue was secretly removed and ultimately melted down by order of the SED. At the same time, Stalinallee was renamed Karl-Marx-Allee.