Berlin: Ex-Senator calls for denazification of the Olympic Stadium

HAMBURG. The former Berlin Senator for Urban Development, Peter Strieder (SPD), has called for the denazification of the Berlin Olympic site, which was built in 1936. "The sculptures, murals, reliefs have to go," wrote Strieder in a guest post for the period. “The entire complex, all buildings, all names, all sculptures sprang from the Nazi ideology. And we should understand that this is the ideological symbolism that today's actors like Höcke, Gauland and Kalbitz refer to, ”warned the SPD politician.

On the Olympic site, the justification for the protection of historical monuments "continues the propaganda of the Nazis" and nobody does anything about it. The red-red-green senate must completely redesign the facility. “The Maifeld including the grandstand should be cleared and made usable for new sports fields, training grounds and playgrounds. All the names of the buildings and streets and training grounds from the Nazi era should be revised. In the future, for example, they should be named after the victims of the latest right-wing terrorist acts, ”suggested Strieder. There is no social justification for the current state.

He himself did not take into account when converting the Olympic stadium for the 2006 World Cup as a senator "that the fascist legacy was also placed under monument protection with the Olympic site". At that time, one did not look closely enough. "So I overlooked the fact that there weren't even any renaming of buildings or streets."

The summer fairy tale is over
The affixing of explanatory boards at that time was insufficient. "In the area of ​​a stadium, into which fans flock in anticipation of a football game, they go unnoticed and are at best a half-hearted alibi."

Perhaps the decisions made at the turn of the millennium had wrongly assumed that "the womb was no longer fertile" and that Europe would be free forever. “20 years later we are faced with a completely different situation. Nationalism and right-wing extremism have regained strength in Europe. The NSU terror, the murders of Halle and Hanau, the election successes of the AfD teach us that the summer fairy tale is over. ”The spirit of right-wing extremism and nationalism - as it manifests itself on the entire Olympic site - is still fruitful, Strieder warned .

Politicians have to decide whether something is valued as a monument. And she must also be responsible for whether the Olympic site will be renovated and maintained with millions more, "or whether it is not time to subject the entire site and the monument protection to a critical revision and to decazify, modernize and transform the site in a lively sports and leisure park, which is also structurally and aesthetically distinct from the ideal of fascism."

Source:

Junge Freiheit