Monument to the Advancing Capitalism in East Berlin

Karl-Marx-Allee Art in Public Space (KISR) Concrete rubber, fiberglass, Berlin 2021
GDR toy cowboys, scale 30:1, Model Art. No. 108 Bob Morris
GDR toy campfire, scale 30:1, Model Art. No. 7/15 

On horses with their heads buried in dry grass, two figures sit and peer intensely into the distance. On both sides of the riders, cars rush past, and the drivers are puzzled by the strangely familiar sight of the two gunslingers—or are they gunslinging women? Black button eyes, heavily painted red mouths, brightly colored pants, fitted vests, one cowboy hat red and one blue, almost like clowns in traditional garb. Their limbs and clothes seem molded from the same rubber, and their pistols look like they were painted onto their outstretched index fingers. Where they’re staring, a bit of smoke is still rising, like from a hastily extinguished campfire. Not a hundred steps away—were there people sitting in a circle just a moment ago?! Some passersby even think they recognize them. Are they villains from the GDR Westerns made by DEFA? Is Karl-Marx-Allee turning into Karl-May-Allee? The former city center, around the grand boulevard of East Berlin, with its orthogonally arranged housing blocks in a steppe of grass and concrete, seems like the last void resisting the pressures of commercialization in the city. But already two outlaws from the Wild West are riding in, hats pulled low over their faces, to stake their claim on the last blank spot on the map. Where cars were recently parked, they’re preparing for the last heist. On the rooftops, the vultures are already waiting, looking down on two enemies from East German production, scaled 30:1. The figures and the campfire were indeed once familiar to every child. They come from the toy collection of the GDR and brought the class struggle of the 1960s and 1970s into living rooms and sandboxes. Side by side, the local prairie could be defended with Harka and his red brothers against the invading bandits and their villainous social system.
It's become quiet around the native inhabitants of the Wild East, with their rectangular tipis between Schillingstraße and Jannowitzbrücke. They’ve been surrounded, overrun, stuffed full of what the cowboys brought, and have forgotten that they once thought of themselves as "Indians," as "Sons [and Daughters] of the Great Bear." The novel series by Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich (1901-1979) tells of the "Wild West" from the perspective of the indigenous people of North America. “Harka” and the "Sons of the Great Bear" became bestsellers with their publication from 1951 to 1981, both in the GDR and beyond. The books' film adaptations by DEFA achieved immense popularity in the GDR. People didn’t just identify with the indigenous population of North America, betrayed by the colonists, but they also dressed up in their self-made "Indian outfits."
Indian clubs sprang up everywhere, and "Indigenous Studies" became a widespread phenomenon, uniting regime opponents with a Western orientation and die-hard communists. Unlike Karl May, the author was a renowned historian, and her youth books were based on her own research and travels to the Native American reservations in the USA and Canada.
In celebration of the author’s 120th birthday, life-sized sculptures are being installed on Karl-Marx-Allee in early September.