The nineteenth century commemorated the Protestant hero Martin Luther with giant statues on a host of town squares across Germany. When after 1871 the new German Reich built its massive new cathedral in the heart of Berlin, it placed a huge Luther statue in its line of national heroes. But for the 500
th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation, the twenty-first century produced the cute plastic Playmobil Luther that you see above. You can assemble (and disassemble) him yourself and he fits neatly in your pocket. No longer staking a claim to public space, the Luther colossus has now shrunk to kitsch.