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Rosa Luxemburg’s tomb prior to the vandalism
THE headstones of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Ernst Thalmann and other revolutionary martyrs have been vandalised in a shocking desecration at the Friedrichsfelde Cemetery in Berlin.
The metal plaques carrying the names and dates of birth and death of the leading communists buried around the Memorial to the Socialists have been taken in an attack reported to German police on Monday.
The tombs surround a giant gravestone bearing the inscription The Dead Remind Us, and form part of an enclosed park within the cemetery whose walls bear the names of hundreds of other revolutionaries killed in the struggle, from those slain fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War to victims of Nazi terror in Germany itself.
Hundreds in Berlin gathered on January 15 to honour the US-born socialist who made East Germany his home. Florentine Morales Sandoval reports
The decision highlights the tension between freedom of expression and the state’s role in shaping historical memory at former concentration camps, reports LEON WYSTRYCHOWSKI
JOHN GREEN observes how Berlin’s transformation from socialist aspiration to imperial nostalgia mirrors Germany’s dangerous trajectory under Chancellor Merz — a BlackRock millionaire and anti-communist preparing for a new war with Russia
