About half an hour before the Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany was scheduled to lay a wreath at the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin’s central Tiergarten to commemorate some 8 million Ukrainians who died in World War II under the Nazis, on May 8, the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s capitulation, Marlis Kaltenbacher arrived by bicycle.

A self-described historian of German fascism, the septuagenarian might be best known for having spotted a dilapidated 19^th century Tudor-style castle while driving through the former East German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the 1990s. Inspired by the castle’s name — Marxhagen — she decided to buy it. She moved in, decorated the place with Marxist paraphernalia and tried and failed for a quarter of a century to turn it into a Marxist think tank (one German TV report dubbed her the “Communist in the Castle” and noted that she spent more time battling building contractors than capitalism). In 2018, she sold it to a private investor.

Kaltenbacher claims to own no radio and no television and boasts that while she has seen no images of the current war in Ukraine, she has nonetheless come to the exact same conclusions as Vladimir Putin has — namely, that an attack on Ukraine was a necessary act of self-defense against the encroachments of the West.

Riding through the Tiergarten, she had to pedal slowly. Decked out in a torso-sized sandwich board quoting Hemingway praising the Red Army and clutching a bouquet of red carnations, she wobbled a little, as she came to a halt at the police barrier.