An interesting conundrum.

Does it change nothing? I think the major trouble with something like a monument - particularly a statue, is that it's intended as an honour. Not the default, but an active admonition to celebrate and memorialize a person's singular importance.

He has a legacy, but much of it is not something we should celebrate now, it's something we should acknowledge, and I don't see the equivalency of the two.

A statue is an honour of his day being forced into our own, a dictate that we should idolize him as they did.

I mean, trying to contextualize this sort of thing, I imagine one of the most vile people to ever live. Hitler.

He did do amazing things for Germany, and he definitely has a mixed legacy. Is removing public monuments to him and symbols a denial of their history or a reaction and acknowledgement of it? He's not removed from the books, he wasn't disappeared. It says that his legacy is not one to be celebrated, not that it isn't one to remember - although, obviously, for the wrong reasons.

Again, I do understand what you're saying, and I think this really does end up having to be a "agree to disagree" thing. It's a conundrum and now I think I am going to go read and see what I see about the philosophy of it.