Changing cities (and their names) bring changing figures on podiums… and in Chemnitz we find a history carved in stone.
We started this journey this week as all Chemnitzers and adopted Saxons do at Der Nischel ‘The Head’.
The Head being Karl Marx after the Father of Communism who the GDR renamed Chemnitz after the war.
We are set a flash quiz to give the size of the politico’s cranium… 23ft if you want to win the bookmark our guide was offering.
He’s a big head all right but Lev Kerbil’s bust of Karl is not the biggest Socialist.
His disciple Lenin craning higher at 25ft in Siberia.
While the undoubted face of the city, Karl, of course is no Chemnitzer, hailing from Trier in southern Germany.
Pppenguin pppodiums
Nor indeed are the penguins which at the other end of the scale have become synonymous with the Saxon city.
The genesis of the small island at the entrance to Innere Klosterstrsse, on the corner of Theaterstrasse is that Antarctica resembles the outline of Chemnitz.
The Peter Kalfells inscription points out that 15,000kms east are one of the largest colonies of emperor penguins in the world.
Strolling through today’s Chemnitz you’ll be struck by how the modern and historic cities fuse.
Ja Liegend
The Skulptur Liegender is a Johannes Schulze concrete-sculpture recliner from the early 80s GDR heyday.
To mark the inauguration of the boulevard so beloved by communists of the era.
While you’ll find a nod to German literary great Bertolt Brecht and his four poems of praise, Lob des Revolutionärs.
Karl Marx Stadt commissioned Martin Wetzel to erect the work ‘in praise of the party’ as part of the redevelopment of downtown.
Happy Kampfer
While further down the road, on the corner of Bahnhofstrasse is Johann Belz’s 1976 relief Kampf und Sieg der revolutionären deutschen Arbeiterklasse.
Which is, of course, a celebration of the German working class.
Der Baths time
The importance of the German Swimming Baths shouldn’t be underestimated either, nor do the Chemnitzers play that down.
With the Stadbadt the oldest and most-eyecatching of a chain of pools which includes outdoor areas for the summer.
Supported by Chemnitz architect Fritz Weber, city building director Fred Otto designed the functional building in 1925.
Initially opposed by the Nazis they jumped on board and in when they saw the Chemnitzers had taken to it.
You will, of course, be taken by the statues carved into the walls next to reception.
Of the full nude bodies beautiful of a young woman and man.
And that as an older lady she wanted it taken down but didn’t get her way.
So through the ages we see our story every day through what we put on podiums.
And here in Chemnitz we find a history carved in stone.
