The Man Who Decapitated 'Hitler'

PASSAU, Germany, July 7, 2008 — -- "Finally, a Hitler assassination that worked," Henryk Broder, essayist and political journalist for Germany's Spiegel magazine, told ABC News. "Sixty-three years after WW II, Hitler was eventually decapitated."

Broder, also a well-known author, was referring to a man from Berlin-Kreuzberg, identified only as Frank L., who this weekend destroyed an Adolf Hitler wax figure on display at the newly opened Madame Tussauds' branch in Berlin.

The 41-year-old man, who had been patiently standing in line for more than an hour before he was admitted to the exhibition, was only the second visitor on the museum's opening day Saturday.

He allegedly ran toward the Hitler statue, pushed aside a museum security guard and, yelling "never war again, never war again," tore off the figure's head in what appears to be a symbolic protest against Hitler.

Frank L., who was detained and questioned by the Berlin police before he was sent home, is now facing charges for causing damage to property and bodily harm, because he slightly injured a museum guard who tried to stop him.

The damaged wax figure was removed but the exhibition remained open. The wax museum is located on the famous boulevard Unter den Linden, which is close to the Brandenburg Gate.

The figures at the eighth Madame Tussauds branch worldwide were first unveiled to the media Thursday, but the inclusion of Hitler in the exhibition has generated controversy for months here in Germany, where Nazi symbols are banned.

Politicians in Berlin have reportedly called the notorious dictator's waxwork "tasteless beyond comparison" and "a disgrace, tasteless, disgusting and in bad style."

Berlin's Mayor Klaus Wowereit urged the museum's curators to consider carefully whether to include Hitler at all. He asked them to be careful not to show him as a cult figure.

The museum, defending the decision, argued that the Third Reich dictator was an important part of Germany's history.

"The museum has pledged to portray Hitler without glorifying him, showing him as a broken man, as he might have looked in his last days before he committed suicide," Madame Tussauds' spokeswoman Katrin Froemsdorf told reporters in the days leading up to the museum's opening.