The Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park is a war memorial and military cemetery in Berlin, opened on May 8, 1949. About 5,000 Red Army soldiers are buried in its central area. The design combined entries by the architect Yakov Belopolsky and the sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich, among others.
A bronze soldier, 39 feet (12 meters) tall, holds a German child and stands over a broken swastika. Sixteen stone sarcophagi, one for each Soviet republic of the time, line the central area with reliefs and quotations from Stalin. A portal of two stylized flags in red granite is flanked by two kneeling soldiers.
Work took more than three years and involved about 1,200 workers. The figures were cast at the Lauchhammer art foundry in 1948. The statue was refurbished in 2003 and 2004 and returned on May 4, 2004. Germany maintains the memorial under the Two Plus Four Agreement.
Comments