BERLIN - Berlin's mayor has expressed concern at Madame Tussauds' plans to include Adolf Hitler among prominent Germans who will be immortalized in wax at its new museum, his spokesman said Monday.
Klaus Wowereit has written a letter to the wax museum's curators urging them to consider carefully whether to include the Nazi dictator and, if they still do, to be careful how they present him, spokesman Guenter Kolodziej said Monday.
"In the mayor's view, he should not be shown as a cult figure," Kolodziej said.
Madame Tussauds' Berlin museum is scheduled to open on July 9. It will be located on the Unter den Linden boulevard, close to the German capital's landmark Brandenburg Gate.
Spokeswoman Katrin Srumsdorf said the museum planned to send Wowereit an official response Tuesday.
She stressed that curators recognize the need to treat Hitler with sensitivity. Unlike in London, where he stands along with major world leaders, Hitler's likeness in Berlin will be hunched over a desk in a dimly lit bunker, she added.
"He will appear as an old, broken man, as he might have looked in the days just before he committed suicide," Srumsdorf said.
The Hitler statue will be the only one on display behind glass, which means visitors won't be able to have their pictures taken with it, and the exhibit will be constantly monitored by video cameras.
Madame Tussauds Berlin will feature many prominent Germans, including former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, current Chancellor Angela Merkel and scientist Albert Einstein - who left Germany shortly before Hitler took power in 1933, never to return.
The display also will feature Britain's prime minister during World War II, Winston Churchill.
Kolodziej noted that it is illegal in Germany to use Nazi symbols as propaganda, but that Hitler's likeness alone is not illegal.
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