At the Berlin Reichstag, May 2, 1945

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The Soviet flag over the Reichstag (different picture)
Chaldej's photo becomes an icon: the GDR's 1975
stamp pad

On the Berlin Reichstag on May 2, 1945 is the title of a series of 36 photos taken by the Soviet photographer Yevgeny Chaldej during the Battle of Berlin at the end of the Second World War . The best-known photo of the series shows the historic moment of hoisting the flag of the Soviet Union on the Reichstag building . The photo is considered an icon of pictorial history and symbolizes "the end of the Second World War" and thus "the end of German fascism ". The photo is known by numerous names such as hoisting a flag on the Reichstag ("Raising a flag over the Reichstag"), the banner of victory on the Reichstag ("Знамя Победы над Рейхстагом") and the Soviet flag over the Reichstag .

The identity of the Red Army soldiers pictured is controversial. Since the picture does not show the actual first flag hoisting and was also partially retouched , the accusation was later repeatedly made that it was a forgery.

Emergence

Soldiers and the leadership of the Red Army saw one of the key symbols of the German Reich in the Reichstag building , which is due, among other things, to the triumphant defense of Georgi Dimitrov in the Reichstag fire trial in 1933, which has become a media event in the USSR . After heavy fighting from April 28th until late evening of May 1st, 1945 the building was taken by the 150th , 171st and 207th Rifle Divisions of the 79th Rifle Corps of the 3rd Shock Army of the Belarusian Front and other combat units. Nine red Soviet flags had been flown in from Moscow . On April 30, 1945, the flag of the 150th Rifle Division was planted as the "Banner of Victory", initially above the entrance portal and at around 10:40 pm on the roof of the building. Political officers later spread that the flag had already flown over Berlin at around 2:25 p.m. At around 3 p.m., the commander of the 3rd Shock Army, Colonel General Kuznetsov , called Marshal of the Soviet Union Zhukov in the command post and reported: “Our red banner is blowing on the Reichstag!” But he also informed Zhukov: “In some places on the upper floors and there is still fighting in the cellars. ”The photo of Chaldej, which was later circulated, was only reproduced on the morning of May 2, 1945 because of the ongoing fighting.

Since June 1941, Chaldej had accompanied various branches of the Soviet army in theaters of war as a photographer. After the conquest of Berlin by the Soviet army, he looked for a suitable motif with high symbolic value. Whether he knew Joe Rosenthal's photo Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima , taken a few months earlier , is controversial. He received red tablecloths from the caretaker of the TASS news agency and had three Soviet flags cut from them by a tailor friend of his. With three soldiers, whom he met in the entrance area of ​​the burning Reichstag, he climbed onto the roof of the building and photographed them hoisting the flag. Then he traveled back to Moscow.

retouching

In Moscow, the picture was to be printed for the first time in Ogonyok magazine on May 13, 1945 . Before the photo was published, an editor noticed that one of the soldiers was recognizable as a looter : he appeared to be wearing a watch on each wrist . Therefore, the watch on the soldier's right arm was retouched. In the Red Army, however, the wearing of wrist compasses (Adrianow model) was widespread, so that the interpretation as a looter was obvious from a distance, but not mandatory.

In later versions, the clouds of smoke in the background of the picture were also blackened so that they looked more threatening. Recently, a new flag was also shown, which billowed more dramatically in the wind.

People involved

Azerbaijani postage stamp marking the 65th anniversary of Victory

According to official Soviet historiography, the flag was hoisted by the three soldiers Meliton Kantaria , Michail Alexejewitsch Jegorow and Konstantin Samsonow . All three were decorated as " Heroes of the Soviet Union " with several medals and, like all holders of the title of "Hero", received a lifelong pension in recognition of their outstanding achievements in the fight against fascism. Alexei Berest , who was also involved , in contrast to the three and other soldiers who took part in the storming of the Reichstag, was not awarded the title of "Hero of the Soviet Union", but only received the Order of the Red Banner , which was awarded en masse, and was interned in the Gulag for three years after the war .

In an interview with British journalists in the mid-1990s, Chaldej revealed the names of the three soldiers actually involved. The recordings showed the Ukrainian Alexei Leontjewitsch Kowaljow , the Kumyks Abdulchakim Issakowitsch Ismailow and the Belarusian Leonid Goritschew . Josef Stalin himself had decided on a group of all soldiers involved in the storming of the Reichstag and chose Kantaria, a Georgian compatriot as flag hoist, the other two were Russians. All other participants, including the photographer and the soldiers actually depicted, were bound to the strictest secrecy.

When Mikhail Petrovich Minin's death in January 2008, it became known that Minin and other soldiers had already flown a Soviet flag on the evening of April 30, 1945 in the Reichstag. Other soldiers also hung more flags on the building in the two days that followed. Since these processes were not or only insufficiently documented by photos, the hoisting by Chaldej was re-staged on May 2nd. In addition to Chaldej, at least three other Soviet photographers took photos of soldiers with flags on May 1st and 2nd in the Reichstag. Ultimately, however, Chaldej's photo prevailed.

literature

Web links

Commons : Raising a flag over the Reichstag (Yevgeny Khaldei)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d “I hoisted the flag on the Reichstag.” - “No, I!” (Excerpt) from berlinstory-verlag.de, accessed on May 12, 2012.
  2. ↑ Jewgeni Chaldej at artnet.de, accessed on May 12, 2012.
  3. ↑ The flag on the Reichstag ( memento from February 10, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) at berlinstory-verlag.de, accessed on May 12, 2012.
  4. ↑ “at around 3 p.m.” and the following quotations from Georgi K. Schukow: Memories and Thoughts , Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1969, pp. 602–603.
  5. ^ War Propaganda: Diffuse Icons of Victory at handelsblatt.com, accessed on May 16, 2012.
  6. ↑ Martin Mehlhorn: “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima”, the history of the origins of an icon and its significance for the American culture of remembrance from 1945–2006 , 2011, p. 14 ( online version ).
  7. ↑ a b c d e Legendary photo manipulation Flag forged, clock hidden, clouds invented at spiegel.de, accessed on May 12, 2012.
  8. ↑ Comparative illustration of retouching and original . The flag on the Reichstag. Part 3. The manipulated photo. Ernst Volland, accessed on May 12, 2012.
  9. ↑ a b c "Guys, stand there and hoist the flag" at faz.net, accessed on May 12, 2012.
  10. ↑ Alexei Berest at peoples.ru, accessed on May 12, 2012.
  11. ↑ The last Red Army soldier from the Reichstag is dead at welt.de, accessed on May 12, 2012.