Russian tank wreck may be placed at embassy

Created: 10/11/2022 3:02 p.m

Files are on the table before a trial in a district court.

© Swen Pförtner/dpa/Symbolbild

A shot-up Russian tank may be erected as a temporary memorial opposite the Russian embassy in Berlin.

The Berlin administrative court decided on Tuesday and thus obliged the Mitte district to approve the planned action of an association.

It is unlikely that the wrecked tank could be set up directly in front of the embassy on the Unter den Linden boulevard because the middle promenade there was not designed for a load of 40 tons.

Berlin - But that is possible opposite on a blocked section of Schadowstrasse, according to the court.

The district had argued that "people were likely to have died" in the wreck, so the display was not appropriate.

In addition, it affects Germany's foreign policy interests and it is not about art.

Traffic is obstructed and people are mentally stressed.

The court has now ruled that it is irrelevant whether it is art, it is about permissible freedom of expression.

Vehicle traffic is not affected, the line-up for two weeks is unproblematic, reasons of piety and foreign policy interests are irrelevant.

The initiators of the exhibition in Berlin, Enno Lenze and Wieland Giebel from the Museum Berlin Story Bunker, submitted an application for the project on behalf of their association Historiale at the end of June.

The district office responsible for public road land had rejected him.

The Ukrainian ambassador Andriy Melnyk then told the "Tagesspiegel": "The destroyed military equipment of Russia, which would be exhibited in the heart of Berlin, should give the people in Germany a first-hand feeling of the brutal war of annihilation." The embassy supports the project with all its might.

An appeal against the decision can be lodged with the Berlin-Brandenburg Higher Administrative Court.

dpa