Jeff Black | Berlin

Jeff Black reports that a man was arrested this week after he tore the head off a wax figure of Adolf Hitler at Madame Tussauds in Berlin – prompting some debate about the seriousness of German history..

Broadcast Saturday 12th July 2008 on RTE World Report

Legend has it that the original Madame Tussaud, who inspired the modern day London waxworks museum, could often be found hanging around the gallows in 18^th century Paris looking for decapitated heads. She would use them to make death masks that would later be turned into wax models of revolutionary heroes. This week, it was the wax heads’ turn to do the rolling, although the subject was of a different class entirely. In Berlin on Saturday, a wax model of former German dictator Adolf Hitler had its head ripped off moments after a new Tussauds exhibition in the city had opened. The assailant, a forty-one year-old former policeman, known only as Frank L., said later that he’d done it as a dare, and that he regretted it.

 Whether it was a dare or not, few public commentators in Germany have mourned the event, as criticism of the decision to include Hitler in the display had been widespread in the first place. The reasoning goes that an exhibition of wax models is a matter of public entertainment – The Berlin show includes celebs like Boris Becker and Justin Timberlake as well as more weighty figures like Albert Einstein. Adolf Hitler, on the other hand, is not seen as a fit subject for family entertainment.

 In Germany, sixty years after the end of the second world war, it is still not the done thing to make light about the Nazi past. For example, you can be imprisoned for displaying any kind of Nazi insignia. Madame Tussauds was not blind to these sensitivities of course. In contrast to the defiant Hitler model in the firm’s London show, the Berlin Hitler is depicted in his final hours, dejected and fearful in the bunker before the onslaught of the Russians. Mr L. apparently leapt a barricade designed to prevent visitors from having their picture taken beside Adolf. But despite the precautions, politicians of varying shades were ready to condemn the exhibition, calling it “tasteless and disgusting”.

 Nevertheless, Hitler’s head is being sewn back on, and according to Madame Tussauds, he’ll be back in his bunker as soon as possible. Perhaps, Germany is not so up-tight about the Nazi past as first thought. In fact, despite a persistent low-level incidence of neo-nazism in Germany, the country is no longer in the deep shame about its national self as it used to be. The first indication of this came during the soccer World Cup of 2006, and more recently during this summers’ European Championships. Germans are now permitting themselves to drape their cars with the national flag, and be openly proud to be German when the team is playing. Positive nationalistic sentiment used to be seen as the first step on the road to neo-Nazism. Now, cautious benign German national feeling is making a slow comeback, albeit confined to sporting activity. It’s in a different league entirely, of course, to the crazed National Socialism of the 1930s – a return to that is unthinkable. But perhaps more importantly, in a Germany at the centre of the European union, the national question is becoming less and less relevant in a serious political sense. Certainly, as Frank L. might now agree, its nothing to lose your head about.

For World Report, this is Jeff Black, in Berlin.