Pardon me if I don't include a photo to go along with this essay.....but I'm not exactly hanging around Alexanderplatz in Berlin, and I don't intend to rip-off someone's owned copy of the photo.
On Friday, for the first of May holiday.....a new statue got dedicated there at the Alexanderplatz. It's a life-size piece featuring WikiLeaks Julian Assange, our NSA guy Edward Snowden, and the Army private busted for releasing classified video and recently turned himself from male-to-female while in Army prison....Bradley Manning.
The theme of the statue involves four chairs, and these three gentlemen on three of the chairs. The statement made is that we all need to stand on the chairs and take such measures as they've demonstrated.
Dedication of the statue? By the Green Party of Germany.
Both Snowden and Manning are legends in Germany, or at least the German news media and those brilliant intellectural German guys always say that.
Assange is a split character. They'd like to elevate him to a legend status, but he's got these rape charges up against him in Sweden and he's been sitting in some consulate living quarters and hoping on folks in Sweden forgetting about him and those two women that he 'tangled' with. If you bring up his accomplishments.....then someone will ask where he is, and then everyone kinda grins because he's avoiding jail-time for Swedish-rape.
How do you get to such a lofty position of getting your own statue in Germany? Well....to be honest, there just aren't too many Americans who get statues in Germany. Kennedy has a statue, but beyond that....there just aren't many.
Clinton never got himself a statue.....neither did Henry Kissenger....and I kinda doubt that Barak Obama will get any statues put up.....mostly because of the NSA business and the drone stuff.
To be kinda honest, even for Germans.....it's mostly dead German guys from the 1900 or prior, who get statues put up. There's supposedly around a hundred Wilhelm II statues around. And maybe just as many for Wilhelm I. Modern-day statues are mostly with clowns, cartoon characters, naked women tempting mortal men, horses rearing up on their hind-legs, festive drunk guys, and devilish characters charming the innocent.
Mainz tends to have a fair number of statues. It doesn't take much for their city council to approve funding and do up a fancy statue with some fantasy overweight character, a guy on a frolic binge, or someone sipping beer in abundance.
Legendary status for Manning and Snowden? Well.....I think you have to take this as it appears. If you put the pictures of the two guys up on some shopping district and asked a hundred Germans to identify them.....fifteen people might recognize Snowden and just say he was the NSA guy. A dozen folks will identify him as some Stuttgart soccer player. A few folks might say he's some new Hollywood actor that they noticed while watching the last Star Trek movie....suggesting he was Khan.
As for Manning? Virtually no one except for forty people associated with the top level of the Green Party in Germany.....would recognize Manning.....that's how unknown the guy is. In fact, if you brought up the name of Bradley Manning....most would just look at you and then possibly suggest he was a fictional character with Breaking Bad (which has recently gotten some attention in Germany).
Yeah, that's how bad the statue trade has slid over the past hundred years in Germany.
They used to put up statues of noteworthy folks in Wiesbaden. There's even one statue for Gustav Freytag....who was one of the top people in existence in Wiesbaden from the 1870s to 1890s, and today if you mentioned the guy's name.....the locals stare at you and just say it doesn't ring a bell.
So, not to say any disheartening stuff over this new statue in Alexanderplatz.....there in Berlin....but it's probably not going to be something to draw people or attention. Luckily, it's not some limping clown with a chicken on his shoulder, a chunky women showing front and rear attributes in generous proportion, or some German crying over a spilled stein of beer. For that, maybe I'm thankful.
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