The monument was erected in 1962 to commemorate Lenin's historic journey in 1917. Then, he lived in exile in Switzerland. Germany offered him a one-way ticket to Russia in the hope that he would further weaken the country.
On the night of April 12 to 13, 1917, a train brought Lenin to Sassnitz, Germany, a town on the Baltic Sea, where he transferred to a ferry. Seven months later, Lenin took power, and the communist Soviet Union was born. The rest is history.
The Lenin City of the GDR
After the Second World War, Sassnitz belonged to the GDR (the German Democratic Republic) and grew into the Lenin city par excellence: it had a Leninplatz, Leninstraße, Lenin school and Lenin monument.