Gigantomania

The issue entered the election campaign when Schroeder's shadow culture minister, Michael Naumann, compared the memorial designs to the gigantomania of Hitler's achitect, Albert Speer. He said that none of his American Jewish friends were in favour of the memorial and that it should be cancelled.

It was, most likely, just a spontaneous - and often subconscious - protest against the officially cultivated gigantomania, which in reality was but an excuse for shortages and inefficiency. "Big is beautiful!" the Soviet propaganda kept insisting, but we refused to believe it.