Adolf Hitler Beheaded in Berlin

[MacGuffin]

Just minutes after opening its doors, the new Madame Tussauds museum in Berlin lost one of its most recognizable figures. A man shoved aside two security guards and ripped Hitler's head off.

This time around, Adolf Hitler's stay in Berlin was considerably shorter than his first stint in the German capital. On Saturday morning, just seconds after the new branch of Madame Tussauds wax museum opened its doors for the first time, a visitor brushed aside two security guards, jumped over the desk at which Hitler was sitting, and tore the Führer's head off.

The man, a 41-year-old from the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin, was just the second visitor to enter the museum. "Never again war!" the man yelled as he attacked the wax figure.

"There were two security guards there, but they couldn't prevent the attack," said Natalie Ruoss, a museum spokeswoman, shortly after the incident. According to the police, one of the guards tried to stop him but the man was able to throw him to the floor. The attacker stands to be charged with assault and property damage.

The museum, located on Unter den Linden not far from the Brandenburg Gate -- and just a few hundred meters from the World War II bunker where Hitler committed suicide in the final days of the war -- remained open after the attack. The headless Hitler, however, had to be hauled away.

Initial reactions were more of bemusement than surprise. "It is more a work of art to rip Hitler's head off than it is to present him in the first place," said Frank Zimmerman, a Social Democratic parliamentarian from Berlin. Henryk M. Broder, a reporter and commentator for SPIEGEL, said wryly: "Finally an attack on Hitler was successful."

Whether the €200,000 wax dictator makes a return depends on how bad the damage turns out to have been, said Ruoss.

Even prior to Saturday's opening, the Hitler figure was controversial. Many thought it tasteless that Madame Tussauds intended to include him in an exhibit that presents many famous and influential Germans from history. The museum, for its part, claimed that, like it or not, Hitler was a major part of Germany's 20th century and thus belonged in the exhibit. Curators promised to present Hitler in such a way as not to glorify him -- and had him sitting behind a heavy desk as he would have looked in his bunker not long before his death.

That Hitler had such a brief stay in Berlin comes as something of a surprise. A Hitler figure in a museum in Hamburg hasn't been touched once in the decades it has been there. The museum there, called the Panoptikum, also has wax figures of Hitler's propaganda guru Joseph Goebbels and the outsized Nazi air force head Hermann Göring. Resistance activists like Hans and Sophie Scholl are also on display.

A figure of Hitler at Madame Tussauds in London has been damaged a number of times since it was put on display in 1933. Only in 2002 did attacks on the Osama bin Laden figure begin outnumbering those on the Führer.

cgh/dpa

Source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/...564100,00.html

I hope I'm not the only one who thinks that's really funny

[the Interceptor]

I loved that story!

Here's a dramatization from the German yellow press:

[Jeepin]

I always find it very funny when people dont think things through and it blows up on them. Who thought that a hitler figure would be a good idea. well, other than white supremicists but I didn't think they owned wax museums

[otispunkmeyer]

seriously, they didnt expect any kind of outrage for putting a wax work of one worlds most disgusting dictators who was responsible for killing and injuring millions and starting one of the worlds biggest and most horrific wars?

some one hasnt got a brain

[smib]

You guys are right, all bad things in history, particularly the Holocaust and those involved should be removed from history and blacklisted. No one need to be reminded of or even know about such people.

Or maybe people have to realize that because he was a prime example of what humans are capable of and is one of the most recognizable figures in recent history this statue does in fact belong in the museum.

[Seasonone]

I like how they are calling it an "attack"

[Jeepin]

Originally Posted by smib

You guys are right, all bad things in history, particularly the Holocaust and those involved should be removed from history and blacklisted. No one need to be reminded of or even know about such people.

Or maybe people have to realize that because he was a prime example of what humans are capable of and is one of the most recognizable figures in recent history this statue does in fact belong in the museum.

You're right about history needing to be recorded, but they should have expected some kind of outrage. Any one else notice hes being charged with assault?

[Ford Prefect]

I also laughed my ass off when I heard it on the news...

But seriously, I don´t get why it´s such a big deal. If the exhibition is about people in German history you can´t exactly just leave Hitler out, it´s fucking history people, this excuse for a human being was actually real, so deal with it. You can´t just leave something like that out and pretend it never happened...

It´s not like they were trying to glorify the whole thing in any way, on the contrary, this was supposed to be a serious display, and not a place for self-pronounced peace activists to have their 5 minutes of fame. I´ve been to madame tussauds before, and they have people like Stalin, Jack the ripper, and Osama... not exactly your friendly role models...

If you want a collection of wonderful and undisturbing things, you can always go to disneyland...

[smib]

Originally Posted by Ford Prefect

If you want a collection of wonderful and undisturbing things, you can always go to disneyland...

Wonderful, yes. "Undisturbing", not so sure about that.

[Ford Prefect]

well, ok, bad example... you could watch the teletubbies, oh no wait, that´s even worse... but anyway, you put them all together and you still won´t be anywhere near the sort of stuff a wax figure of hitler should stir up...

I hope they make a new one, I mean make it disgusting, make it ridiculous, display him in a ballerina suit or something... but don´t just pretend it never happened because some hippies can´t deal with it...

[anti-net]

Heh I found it very funny, they must have expected something to happen to it. At least his head got chopped off and not some neo-nazis turned it into a shrine.

[Jeepin]

maybe they should make it out of something stronger than wax? I get thats its a wax musuem but thats alot of money for something they know is going to get damaged. How about metal? At least then someone would have to steal it so its not seen, and that would be much harder.

[Ford Prefect]

Originally Posted by Jeepin

maybe they should make it out of something stronger than wax? I get thats its a wax musuem but thats alot of money for something they know is going to get damaged. How about metal? At least then someone would have to steal it so its not seen, and that would be much harder.

hard to replicate someone though using metal... unless of course you´re building the terminator...

[Solberg]

Good.

The "attacker" gets my respect.

[Jeepin]

They could make a mold using the wax one and then cast it in metal. it would even be reproducible if they kept the mold. hell even wood would work, anything stronger.

[KaJuN]

Not having Hitler's likeness on display would constitute censorship in my book and wouldn't that be just as bad as some of the things he did while in power? I also believe that by not having the figure on display the museum would be disrespecting all those who died at the hands of the Nazis. By not having this display the victims would be brushed under the rug along with Hitler.

[nist7]

Originally Posted by smib

You guys are right, all bad things in history, particularly the Holocaust and those involved should be removed from history and blacklisted. No one need to be reminded of or even know about such people.

I'm guessing this is sarcasm.

But I was surprised the two security guards was unable to tame the criminal. The organizers should've beefed up security with such a sensitive display.

[smib]

Originally Posted by KaJuN

Not having Hitler's likeness on display would constitute censorship in my book and wouldn't that be just as bad as some of the things he did while in power? I also believe that by not having the figure on display the museum would be disrespecting all those who died at the hands of the Nazis. By not having this display the victims would be brushed under the rug along with Hitler.

Exactly.

[nist7]

Originally Posted by Solberg

Good.

The "attacker" gets my respect.

This scumbag gets zero respect from me:

The 25 artists and sculptors who worked on the piece over four months, using more than 2000 pictures and archival documents, had portrayed Hitler as an ageing, broken man, staring into space in his bunker as he contemplated the fall of the Third Reich, while Russian troops entered the ruins of Berlin.

The attacker, from the nearby Kreuzberg district, a heartland for radical political activists, was the second visitor to reach the sculpture after the museum opened, said.

Police said the man had said he was protesting against the "possibility that Adolf Hitler was once again in Berlin". They said the man was known to police for public transport infringements and stealing electricity by cutting cables and routing power into his flat. The man would be charged with criminal damage and assault, they said.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/hit...282653596.html

Not only is he so mentally deranged that he believes a wax-figure was equivalent to the return of Hitler to Germany, he has shown complete disregard and infantile intelligence towards the purpose of the whole exhibit as he destroyed an incredibly powerful art piece that reminds us of the horrors of our past.

If this man were a WW2 survivor or a deathcamp survivor or is closely related to one then I can understand if his emotions just overcame him when he saw such a life-like depiction of Hitler. But from what we know so far the man is a psychotic bent on attention and/or forgot his meds that day.

[Hidden_Hunter]

Originally Posted by Ford Prefect

I also laughed my ass off when I heard it on the news...

But seriously, I don´t get why it´s such a big deal. If the exhibition is about people in German history you can´t exactly just leave Hitler out, it´s fucking history people, this excuse for a human being was actually real, so deal with it. You can´t just leave something like that out and pretend it never happened...

It´s not like they were trying to glorify the whole thing in any way, on the contrary, this was supposed to be a serious display, and not a place for self-pronounced peace activists to have their 5 minutes of fame. I´ve been to madame tussauds before, and they have people like Stalin, Jack the ripper, and Osama... not exactly your friendly role models...

If you want a collection of wonderful and undisturbing things, you can always go to disneyland...

Plenty of other people on display in the wax museums that have commited many attrociaties, though personally I don't think this had anything to do with protesting it's display I suspect a "career" activist wanted to make a name for themselves.