Berlin - A man tore off the wax head of an effigy of Adolf Hitler in Berlin on Saturday, just minutes after the new branch of the Madame Tussaud's waxwork-museum chain opened for the first time to the public. 

German police said the man, 41, was detained. 

The decision by London-based Tussaud's, part of the Merlin Entertainments company, to include Hitler in the 75-figure amusement has roused fierce passions in the German capital. 

Responding to suggestions that it might become a site of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis, Tussaud's depicted Hitler as a broken man in his bunker just before his 1945 defeat and death. The Saturday opening was extensively reported in the German media. (dpa)