Lenin Statues in Fürstenberg

Hunting down what is left of the Red Army around Berlin

It’s 2018, and there are still some Lenin statues left around Germany. We visited one of these statues in Berlin, and we continue looking for them around the country. One day we got lucky, and we managed to find two of them on the same day. That blessed day was back in November 2016 when we took our bikes north and went to Fürstenberg to do some urban exploration.

After the Second World War was over, the Red Army scattered military bases around Berlin, and Lenin statues were seen in most of those places. In Fürstenberg, there were close to 25.000 soldiers, but there is nothing much left to be seen today. We walked around looking for buildings and other structures, but we only found the Haus der Offiziere where Lenin still stands in front of it.

Haus der Offiziere, translated as the officer’s house, is one of the few remaining Soviet buildings in Fürstenberg. When we visited the location back at the end of 2016, we walked into a house that was under renovation, but that has seen better days. Some of the rooms were in such a sad state that we didn’t stay there long. And the last two floors were so bad that we gave up going up the stairs.

Renovations are happening everywhere these days. Most of the abandoned places we explored in Berlin are turning into houses and apartment buildings, like the abandoned hospital in Neukölln. We approve this, and we believe Lenin would like this as well but we can never know for sure since he is long dead and the statue didn’t seem like wanted to share his view on the topic with us.

Since 1993, when the Soviet Army left Fürstenberg, not many people visited this house close to Röblinsee. The barracks behind it are still there, and they connect to the officer’s home through a bunker-like tunnel that was hard to get in if we didn’t have flashlights with us. There was trash everywhere around the barracks and old Soviet newspapers on most of the walls. And it seems like the main house is going to become something else soon. Maybe it’s already completely different, we don’t know. Abandoned Berlin was there back in October 2017 and saw something similar to what we saw a year before but we can never be 100% sure.

The pictures you can see here are from two different locations around Fürstenberg. One of the is the officer’s house where a Lenin statue stands in front of it. This is the most accessible spot to find, and since there is some renovation work happening there, you might run into some people there if you want to do like we did and explored the area.

The second place was we found Lenin statues was behind what we believe it used to be the houses the SS guards used to have in town. Today they are apartment buildings, but they used to house Russian officers before. In the middle of the woods, behind these houses, there is a Lenin head that has seen better days and that we can only imagine where did it use to stand. This might be the most substantial Lenin head we ever found in the wild, and we saw some Soviet statues before in Estonia.

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A post shared by Felipe Tofani (@ftrc) on Nov 9, 2016 at 4:19am PST

If you want to explore the area and take pictures of these Lenin statues around Fürstenberg, you need to do like we did and took a Regional Train all the way to town. They go between Rostock and Berlin, and you can bring your bike in, this will help you walk around. Be careful with the neighbors and the building itself, the state of decay in some areas was appalling. Bring a flashlight with you if you want to see the tunnel/bunker! The map below will help you find the Lenin statues.

Fotostrasse visited these Lenin statues back in November 2016 with our friend Mike Savage.