Video: Forgotten feat: which Soviet soldier became the prototype of the monument to the Liberator Soldier in Berlin
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
69 years ago, on May 8, 1949 in Berlin was inaugurated monument to the Soldier-Liberator in Treptower Park. This memorial was erected in memory of 20 thousand Soviet soldiers who died in the battles for the liberation of Berlin, and became one of the most famous symbols of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. Few people know that the idea for the creation of the monument was a real story, and the main character of the plot was a soldier Nikolay Masalov, whose feat was undeservedly forgotten for many years.
The memorial was erected on the burial site of 5 thousand Soviet soldiers who died during the capture of the capital of Nazi Germany. Along with the Mamayev Kurgan in Russia, it is one of the largest and most famous of its kind in the world. The decision to build it was made at the Potsdam Conference two months after the end of the war.
The idea for the composition of the monument was a real story: on April 26, 1945, Sergeant Nikolai Masalov, during the storming of Berlin, brought out a German girl from under fire. He himself later described these events as follows: “Under the bridge I saw a three-year-old girl sitting next to her murdered mother. The baby had blonde hair that was slightly curled at the forehead. She kept pulling at her mother's belt and calling: "Mutter, mutter!" There is no time to think about it. I am a girl in an armful - and back. And how she will shout! I am on the move, and so, and so I persuade: shut up, they say, otherwise you will open me. Here, indeed, the Nazis began to shoot. Thanks to ours - they helped us out, opened fire from all barrels”. The sergeant was wounded in the leg, but the girl was reported to his own. After the Victory, Nikolai Masalov returned to the village of Voznesenka, Kemerovo region, then moved to Tyazhin and worked there as a manager in a kindergarten. His feat was remembered only 20 years later. In 1964, the first publications about Masalov appeared in the press, and in 1969 he was awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of Berlin.
Nikolai Masalov became the prototype of the Liberator Warrior, but another soldier posed for the sculptor - Ivan Odarchenko from Tambov, who served in the Berlin commandant's office. Vuchetich noticed him in 1947 at the celebration of the Day of the Athlete. Ivan posed for the sculptor for six months, and after the monument was erected in Treptow Park, several times he stood guard next to him. They say that several times people approached him, surprised by the similarity, but the private did not admit that this similarity was not accidental. After the war, he returned to Tambov, where he worked at a factory. And 60 years after the opening of the monument in Berlin, Ivan Odarchenko became the prototype of the monument to the Veteran in Tambov.
The model for the sculpture of the girl in the arms of the soldier was supposed to be a German woman, but in the end the Russian girl Sveta, the 3-year-old daughter of the commandant of Berlin, General Kotikov, posed for Vuchetich. In the original version of the memorial, the warrior was holding an assault rifle in his hands, but they decided to replace it with a sword. It was an exact copy of the sword of the Pskov prince Gabriel, who fought along with Alexander Nevsky, and this was symbolic: Russian soldiers defeated the German knights on Lake Peipsi, and several centuries later defeated them again.
Work on the memorial took three years. Architect Y. Belopolsky and sculptor E. Vuchetich sent a model of the monument to Leningrad, and a 13-meter figure of the Liberator Warrior was made there, weighing 72 tons. The sculpture was shipped to Berlin in parts. According to Vuchetich, after it was brought from Leningrad, one of the best German foundry workers examined it and, finding no flaws, exclaimed: "Yes, this is a Russian miracle!"
Vuchetich prepared two projects of the monument. Initially, it was planned to put up a statue of Stalin with a globe in his hands in Treptow Park as a symbol of the conquest of the world. As a fallback, Vuchetich proposed a sculpture of a soldier with a girl in his arms. Both projects were presented to Stalin, but he approved the second.
The memorial was solemnly opened on the eve of the 4th anniversary of the Victory over fascism, on May 8, 1949. In 2003, a plaque was installed on the Potsdam Bridge in Berlin in memory of the feat of Nikolai Masalov performed in this place. This fact was documented, although eyewitnesses claimed that there were several dozen such cases during the liberation of Berlin. When they tried to find the girl herself, about a hundred German families responded. The rescue of about 45 German children by Soviet soldiers was documented.
The Motherland-Mother from the propaganda poster of the Great Patriotic War also had a real prototype: who is actually depicted on the famous poster.
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