”Adolf Hitler has left us — after a very short visit,” concluded Die Welt am Sonntag after an attack on a wax figure of the Nazi leader left the dictator headless and many Germans gleeful.
Less than three minutes after the doors of Berlin’s new Madame Tussauds waxwork opened to the public on Saturday, the €200000 figure of Hitler had been decapitated by a former policeman.
The assailant, a 41-year-old self-professed left-wing activist identified only as Frank L, who was second in the queue for the museum, was being hailed as a national hero on Sunday night after witnesses described how he ran past guards and leapt on to the figure, ripping off its head while repeatedly shouting: ”No more war!”
”Seventy-five years after he seized power, and 63 years after the end of the Third Reich, finally someone has succeeded in assassinating Adolf Hitler,” wrote the essayist Henryk M Broder in Der Spiegel. ”It’s good news — the bad news is it happened rather too late.”
His mockery reflected humorous commentaries across the German press, as well as photo montages of how a headless Führer might have looked.
”The man really believed that he could rewrite history by ripping off the head of a wax figure in Madame Tussauds,” wrote Peter Hahne in Bild am Sonntag.
Critics who had tried to prevent the exhibition could not hide their pleasure. ”It’s quite an act of artistry to succeed in ripping off Hitler’s head,” said Social Democrat MP Frank Zimmermann. ”Of much more artistic value than putting him on display in the first place.”
A museum committee is to rule on the future of the figure on Monday.
Frank L faces charges of vandalism and bodily harm after a guard was slightly injured in the attack. – guardian.co.uk