I’ve been doing some more research on Stalingrad and I came across a blog page featuring several shots taken in 2012 during the filming of the movie “Stalingrad”. Many of these pictures show the Barmaley Fountain, which I had suggested for use as the Stalingrad marker. Ossel had noted that using this statue would be a problem for a couple of reasons: 1) the comparative scale of a small fountain sculpture relative to the much larger buildings used in other markers, and 2) the inability of his program to handle organic shapes.
It now turns out, however, that the statue was located in an area called Station Plaza, next to a large building (presumably the predecessor of the postwar railway station located in the area). I haven’t been able to find good contemporary shots of the original station, but I’ve posted below several shots of the replica that was built for the movie. So a new approach for the Stalingrad marker would be to depict the building (in its intact pre-war state) with a square in front of it, and to put in the middle of the square a little circular element depicting the fountain statue. The main focus of the marker would be the building, which is suitably large, and because the fountain statue would now be tiny in size (and thus would have almost no details) there would no longer be a problem over the limitations of Ossel’s program.
