The lawyer for the two Berlin museum operators who want to exhibit war equipment captured in Ukraine in front of the Russian embassy on Unter Den Linden has applied for a temporary injunction from the administrative court. The Berlin administrative court confirmed that the application had been received on Friday.
The initiators of the tank exhibition, Wieland Giebel and Enno Lenze, want to get the district office to issue a special road use permit for the exhibition. They reiterated their intention to deploy a “disabled Russian” tank in a blog post Thursday to denounce Russian atrocities and war crimes in front of the Russian embassy.
At the beginning of August, the Mitte district office rejected the application submitted by Giebel and Lenze in June on the grounds that the exhibition affected “the foreign policy interests of the Federal Republic of Germany”. In addition, it was likely that people had died in the tanks – the exhibition was “therefore not appropriate”.
The current Ukrainian ambassador, Andriy Melnyk, was outraged by the district office’s refusal. At the beginning of August he described it as a “real scandal” and called on the Governing Mayor Franziska Giffey and the Senate Chancellery to reconsider what he saw as a “questionable decision” and to grant permission for the exhibition. The Senate Chancellery did not want to comment on the exhibition after the request.
It is still unclear when the administrative court will make a decision. Urgent procedures are dealt with in a timely manner. If there is no urgency on a daily basis – such as in the case of registered demonstrations – a decision can also take several weeks. This could be the case with the urgent application for the tank exhibition.
The Mitte district office did not want to comment on the matter on Friday with a view to the pending proceedings.
While the dispute over the tank exhibition in Mitte continues, a burnt-out car wreck can already be seen in Charlottenburg, in which four Ukrainian women were killed by Russian soldiers. The destroyed car is currently a reminder of the Russian atrocities during the war on George-Grosz-Platz in Charlottenburg. The vehicle is part of the Ukrainian-German exhibition “Testament of Bucha”.
In Charlottenburg there were “no concerns” about the current exhibition, and no expert opinion was necessary. “There was an application for special use of road land and we processed this application as normal, like hundreds of other applications,” district councilor Oliver Schruoffeneger told the Tagesspiegel Checkpoint.
Giebel, who is still hoping for a tank exhibition in front of the Russian embassy, told the Tagesspiegel on Friday that he sees his concerns confirmed by the Charlottenburg exhibition “Testament of Bucha”.
“The impact of a tank in front of the Russian embassy and the associated indictment of the criminal war would be even greater,” he said. He expressed incomprehension that the district offices of Mitte and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf apparently assessed the topic differently – although both were under the authority of the state.
According to Giebel, the tanks originally intended for the exhibition, which were previously exhibited in Prague and Warsaw, are no longer available for an exhibition in Berlin. That’s why he’s traveling to Kyiv on Saturday to look for other possible war equipment for the exhibition, Giebel said. He had been signaled from Ukraine that tanks were ready for this purpose.
