9-meter high Lenin statue moves to another Groningen town

A 9-meter bronze statue of the Soviet Union founder Vladimir Lenin, weighing 17,000 kilograms, has been temporarily relocated from Tjuchem to Oostwold in the municipality of Oldambt, according to RTV Noord. It will serve as a set piece for the music theater performance De Graanrepubliek by Zummerbühne, which runs from 5 August to 6 September in Oostwold. The move of the statue, which has stood for decades in the Groningen region, required significant effort.

The statue of the Russian revolutionary and founder of the Soviet Union stood until 1991 in the East German town of Merseburg, near Leipzig. After the dissolution of the German Democratic Republic, it was removed and placed in a bunker building on a former airfield. In the late 1990s, Groningen entrepreneur Henk Koop purchased the property and brought the statue to the Netherlands. He installed the 9-meter figure in his business park in Tjuchem and has occasionally lent it out.

The statue now serves as a set piece for a music theater performance. “No one can get around it,” Peter Funcke from the theater company Zummerbühne told RTV Noord. It stands behind a grandstand. “So it will really catch the eye.”

Funcke described the relocation as “a whole ordeal.” The statue was transported on a low-loader and positioned with a crane at its temporary site. “This morning they started. They were busy with it for a few hours.”

Funcke said the presence of the only large Lenin statue in the Netherlands in Oost-Groningen is fitting. The region once had a sharp divide between wealthy gentlemen farmers and poor agricultural laborers, and labor unrest led to several uprisings in the second half of the 19th century. The theater production addresses that class struggle.

“The presence of the statue on the site fits seamlessly with that,” Funcke told the newspaper. “Lenin is the founder of communism in the Soviet Union. It is a very special and curious coincidence that this iconic work is now part of our location.”

After the performances, the statue will move to another location in Oostwold, where it will become part of a new heritage center focused on the history of communism in Oost-Groningen.

Henriette Davelaar of Centrum De Graanrepubliek welcomed the arrival. “It does something to you. It grates. It is not a propaganda statue, but it tells something about the history of this area.”