{"id":2687,"date":"2018-07-18T14:34:13","date_gmt":"2018-07-18T11:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/?p=2687"},"modified":"2018-07-18T16:50:59","modified_gmt":"2018-07-18T13:50:59","slug":"the-motherland-calls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wehle.ru\/wp\/?p=2687","title":{"rendered":"The Motherland Calls"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saying this is the largest statue of a woman in the world doesn’t communicate its majesty. It really is impressive.<\/p>\n

The Motherland is approached via a series of memorials. I find them all moving. People are taking each other’s photos at each stage. I always find this strange: „Here I am at the memorial to the event where tens of thousands of people died.“<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I really like the bas-reliefs on either side. The figures all seem to inhabit ruins. The impression of people fighting in the ruins of a city is quite effective. Loudspeakers broadcast martial music, a historic radio address, the sounds of diving airplanes, explosions, battle.<\/p>\n

Entrance to the site is made via a tunnel, with what seems to be rubble on either side. Again, I think this is all really well-designed and executed.<\/p>\n

Elegiac choral music plays.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Four of the six statues on the right have men and a woman helping wounded comrades. One has a soldier striding forward with weapons in his hands past a stricken fellow. Only the last of the six has two men who are whole, triumphant. They have slewn the massive serpent one holds wrapped about his arm.<\/p>\n

I see this heroine rallying her compatriots to defend their land and a series of images go through my mind: obese Californians wearing pink knit pussy caps waddling through the streets of San Francisco; Poles of the Home Army finding out the Soviets would keep their Molotov-Ribbentrop gains after the war; street fighters in Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, and Kiev all apparently facing a shortage of pink knit pussy caps and so hurling Molotov cocktails at the various armies they faced; Lithuania building a fence on its borders. A fence. Friggin‘ Lithuanians.<\/p>\n

Red October factory (behind the white buildings) as seen from The Motherland Calls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saying this is the largest statue of a woman in the world doesn’t communicate its majesty. It really is impressive. The Motherland is approached via a series of memorials. I find them all moving. People are taking each other’s photos … Weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wehle.ru\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wehle.ru\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wehle.ru\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wehle.ru\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wehle.ru\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wehle.ru\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wehle.ru\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wehle.ru\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wehle.ru\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}