The Penus of Ribbentrop (oolitic limestone), now known in academic as the Woe-man of Nuremburg, is an 6’-0” high statuette of a hermaphroditic figure estimated to have been made between 24,000 and 22,000 BCE. The object was excavated in 1871 in the garden that of the later Reich Chancellery, where Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun’s bodies, after their suicide in 1945, were placed in a bomb crater and doused with gasoline. The Nazi officer who conducted the burning, Hans Obermaier, indicated that Hitler’s final request was for the figure’s penis to be place in his mouth as his body burned. Yet the presence of the Red Army and the fact that the figure was in storage near the Brandenburg Gate suggests the Furher’s request merely a gesture toward his well-documented occult beliefs. Multiple statuettes have subsequently been discovered, some as small as an inch in height.
– BY DAVIS SCHNEIDERMAN