Twenty-four years after it was buried in a forest on the outskirts of Berlin, a giant granite head of Vladimir Lenin was dug up on Thursday to be turned into an exhibit in the German capitol.
The 3.5-ton head bearing Lenin’s goateed and baldheaded likeness was once a part of a 19m (62ft) monument to the communist leader that once towered over the eastern half of the city.
After the 1989 fall of the Berlin wall, the monument was unceremoniously torn down, split into 130 pieces, and entombed in the nearby woodlands.
Following its excavation, the head will be transported to the Spandau Citadelle museum in west Berlin, to be included in a new exhibition of key figures who impacted Germany’s tempestuous history.
The prospect of the head being put on display has divided the residents at the statue’s former site in Lenin Square in east Berlin, now renamed United Nations Square.
While some residents were critical of the head being on display so soon again, others believed it to be “a great idea,” reported the NY Post.
For decades leading up to the dismantling of the USSR, Lenin, who led the Russian Bolshevik revolution of 1917, was held up as the model Communist in East Germany, with his eminency celebrated ubiquitously in everyday disseminations, such as portraits, banners, and statues.
Berlin officials do not plan on unearthing the other sections of the statue.