A surprised Berlin motorist wasn’t the only one to call police after seeing a grinning Adolf Hitler face, all 25 feet of it, projected onto an office building in the city where Hitler committed suicide in 1945.
The image prompted police to respond after a shocked motorist, one of dozens, called to say he had seen a large Hitler image at Leipziger Platz cast on to a building.
The projection of the happy dictator was projected onto the wall as a portion of the Berlin Light art festival which attracts two million international visitors.
A spokesperson said soon after that describing Hitler as attractive was an error that was quickly rectified.
Hitler, the curse of all modern Germans, is a part of the festival line-up. He laughs insanely, rolls his eyes and as red flags flap alongside him, the coal black of Hitler’s swastika – banned since 1945- is replaced by diamonds also coal black.
Do you want total war? – the same question his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels roared at Berliners in 1943 following the crushing of the German army at Stalingrad – blasted from loudspeakers as stunned Berliners questioned if they had time-travelled to the past.
The spooky light show lasted less than 30 seconds and occurred only a few hundred yards from the location of the Berlin bunker where he committed suicide 76 years ago.
Although police were summoned, they had already given their approval for the show. A spokesman said there wasn’t a law prohibiting showing Hitler’s face and no swastikas were visible, so the constitution wasn’t breached, Daily Star reported.
With this art installation, there’s nothing blacked out in German history, said organizer Andreas Bhlke of Berlin Lightm.
Nothing is missing. It is a clear warning to everyone, said Bhlke. That must never happen in the future. We motivate people to face history. They do not promote Nazism.