The Ghostsof Berlin

Brian Ladd

itq;
TheUniversity
ol Chicago
Press Chicagoand London

Thereis nothingin Berlin to captivate
the loreign visitor, except a tew
museums,palacesand the atmy.l
-Emperor Wilhelm ll, 1892
I've neverloved this place. Here on the
P a l a c eB r i d g e ,w e sch o o lch ild r ewe
n re
lined up in the cold on the Emperor's
birthday,January27. . . . 0n the hot
Augustdays of 1914| stood here
wedged in the crowd in flont of the
palacethat is now in ruins.The crowd
sang one song after another.Then theY
1pusheddown Unterden Lindenin the
j O.tiriur ol war. After four years I saw
/ revolutionaryworkers
marchingbehind
j red flags in the samestreets.. . .
Nothingol that can be seen or heard
i mght be. For
' any more,nothingof the people,
nothingol the buildings.This place is a
parcel ol land throughwhich the Spree
ffows.This is what historylooks like.2
-Alfred Diiblin.1947
Old Berlin
Europe used to be ruled by kings, and its capital cities
still have
palacesto remind us of their days of glory. io, in a sense,
what
The Easternzoneregimewill surely visitors to Berlin encountered in the sllmmer of
1993 rvould
on the site ot
center its headquarters
hav5been a familiar sight in.any other Europeancapital.
the old Hohenzollernpalace,now Walking
or driving from the BrandenburgGate dorvn the
"Marx-EngelsPlatz."The chiel grand old boulel
vard Unter den Linden, they approachedan o.,.,ut"
governmentbuildingwill dominatethe yellou,facacle
scene iust as its prototypesdo in
shimmering in the distance.Here, where the boulevard
reached
Warsaw, Moscow, and other capitals in the banks of the Spree,resicledthe Hohenzollerns
1br lbur hun_
the East.Evenif the gove.nmentof a drcd years.
reunitedGermanynevermovssinto that For l}erliners, too, it ,,vasan impressivesight, but
one that
building at all, it will neverthelessbe elicited a different response.T'hey knew that the
ruins of the
standingthere in case unilicationis
palacehad been clynamitedin 1950-or at least thcy kneu. \'-.,,...
long delayedand wo shall have to that
the huge space at the end of Unter den Linclen -"
wrestle with the problemol what to do iucl b""r. u
parking lot for years.The palacethey sarv in 1993 and 1994
with it.3
-Friedrich Fiirlinger,
West Berlin city planner,1960
made of painted canvashung iiom un .nu-.rot,. scarlbld
exact dimensions of the vanished building (fig.
u,as
i. the
f Z). It was an -)
I
extraordinary apparition of something long fo.gott.n, ,.1.**-
or some_
We should rebuildthe palace as a sign thing never seen-or perhaps of somethirig thlt
that we are at least trying to forget the mockup had a purpose: it rvas erected [y u
g.orlp dedicated
lorty years of socialism.
to seeing the palace rebuilt. The decorate.l r.uffol,l
-from a commentbook brouglrt to
the general public what rvas already a heatecl debate
lor lhe 1993exhibition"The Palace?" u'n.,n,_,g
intellectuals.
Without the palace-at least its In Berlin even the remote past cannot escape
controversv-
exterior-l lack part of my identityas a Many cities proudly display their historical pedigrees
in the fbrir
Berliner. of ancient buildings and monuments. But in Berlin,
these build_
-from the comment book ings must be restored from ruins, if not re_createcl
entirely. Antl
for "ThePalace?"
lld Be rlin each choice of building and of identity is freighted u'ith all the
lnrcler.rsof Gennan history.
M ediev alBe rl i n : T h e N i k o l a i Ou a rte r
'I'he demise of the Wall restored to Berlin its historical center.
Both the politics and the geography of division had lorced East
and West lJerlin into peculiar compromises u'ith the liistorical
city. Now the imaginary unity long projected onto the Wall
coultl give way to a real focal point. Or so Berlin's political and
cultural lcaders thought, naturally enough. For most orclinary
citizens, orbits of home, u'ork, and leisure remained entirely on
12
one side or the other of the now invisible Wall. Their habits
Scafloldingand
canvaslacade
would be slovy to change-especially since the historical center
lr'as largely emPty of homes, shops, corporate headquarters'and
on site ol toyal
palace,1993 (tcmporarily) a central government as rvell. A physical void at
the center had to be filled, but so did a psychologicalvoid left Ol d B etl i n
by political, economic,and cultural forces pulling East and West
apart.To re-createa senseofwholeness,leaderslooked for points
of orientation.
'l'he oldest part of Berlin, since 1920 defined as the district
of Mitte (Middle), belonged to the East. Despite its narne,after
19.+5it lay on the edge of East Berlin, surrounded on two and
a half sitles by West llerlin and thus by the Wall. Mitte had
encompassedthe central institutions of government,finance,anri
culture lor successivePrussianand German regimes, including
the German Democratic Republic. Ail had establishedthemselves
within the narrolv confinesof medieval and early modern Berlin.
'fhis processof continuous redevelopmenthas ensuredtl-ratlittle
remains of old Berlin. The bombers of World War II reshaped
the city, of course, but even before the lvar, Beriin was busy
reinventing itself. In the boom years around the turn of the
century, many narrolv streets of ancient houses gave vvay to
massivenew structures for government and business,and the
Naziscontinued the processon a ferv enormoussites.Speculation
and redevelopmenteven claimed most buildings from the eigh-
teenth and early nineteenth centuries, replacing them with big-
ger, taller, more ornate and impressiveones. After 1945, once
the rubble had been cleared, the heart of East Berlin rvas a
winclswept district of vacant spaces,rvhich were only sloivly
covered with nerv buildings. l'he senseof desolationrvas hardly
countered by the rou, of high-rise apartment housesbuilt along
the southern edge of Mitte around 1970 as a s).rynbolic
and visual
barrier reinforcing the Wall.
Of course,Berlin never amounted to much as a medievalcity.
Its identity in later times (unlike Cologne'sor Nuremberg's)r,r'as
thus rarely linked to its medieval past, per-rnittingthat past to
be neglected.The major cities of medieval Gerrnany lay mainly
to the south and west. The vast piain of northeasternGermany
was on the margins of the Roman-influencedChristian civiliza-
tion defined by Charlemagne'sempire. Only in the twellth cen-
tury did most of the territory of the later GDR forge permanent
links to Germany ar-rdthe West. Under the sponsorshipol various
princes, ethnic Gennan colonists began settling the area. They
founded torvns and conquered, assimilated,or drove out the
Slavicinhabitantsof the area,who were for the most part neither
d Berlin Christiansnor town-dwellers.Although there may have been an
Ol d B erl i n
carliersettlcmentor1the site, lJerlin'spoorly documentedorigins
can probably bc placed in the late trvelfth century. Sometime in
tlie early thirteenth century, tor,r'ncharters wore granted to tw'o
scttlemcnts on clppositesides of a fordable crossingof the Spree
River. Thc iarger torvn on the riglit bank was named Berlin; the /'
othcr, an island enclosedby an arm of the river, was Ciilln. Each
./
was l)rotected by lvalls. The two tor'vr-rsr.r'ould remain closely
r':
tl
allied, ancl soon the name llerlin was customarily applied to both
togedrcr.
i
Documents that could give these events precise dates are lost. |I -/"
An exact date is furnished only by the olclest document that 2. r

clearly ider-rtificseither town, one fiom 1237 that n-rentionsCcilln.

In 1937, Berlin's Nazi leaders decideclthat rn,asoccasionenough
to stagea celebrationof the city's 700th anniversary.In 1987,
ncithcr East nor West Bcrlin found this precedent too tainted
to stop thcm from trvo ambitious and competir"rgcelebrationsof
llcrlin's 75Oth ar-rniversary.
Clrurchcs, fragments of churches, ancl one small piece of a
restored tou,n u'all are all that renrain of the buildings of medi-
eval Berlin. Even tlie street pattern and scale of the mcdieval
town has been virtually obliterated. The northern half of the
Ccjlln island was appropriated long ago fbr royal use;the sor.rthern
tip of thc islanclhas becn rebuilt with high-rises; in between is
next to n<.rthing.On the Berlir-rside, alter lr.artime rtrbble had
been clearcd, there remained one lonely churcl-rto the north and 13
a fcw streets to the south in 'w'hichor.recan still find the ruins Nikolai0uarter,
of a monastery church as rvell as a senseof the old scale of the 1995.
At left is the
to\\rn. apseol the St.
llrrt arnid the mrrltilane thoroughfares antl rvindswcpt plazas, NikolaiGhurch.

the visitor can find reluge in the vr.indinglanes and intact rolvs
of trarlitionalhousesaround the church of St. Nikolai (St. Nicho-
las). St. Nikolai is the oldest medievalchurch of Berlin, ancl the
Nikolai Quarter u,as the heart of the n.redievaitorvn. Here is a
conccntration of caf6s and craft sliops clearly aimed at tourists.
Visit<lrsto German cities are useclto finding the "Altstadt," the
ancicnt city center, restored as a place lbr pedestrian strolls,
nightlife, and tourists' deutschmarks.West llerlin had no such
Altstadt, excc'pt in the remote suburb (and once-inclependent
tovyn) of Spandau. With reunification, all llerlir-rcrscould again
crnbracetheir city's historical center (fig. t3).
One peculiar fact about this ancient neighborhood should be
noted, however: it is brand new. In 1979,lt u,asmostly empty
land. The ruins of the cl-rurchand a few scatteredbuitclrrrgswere
all that stood in one of the more clesolatepatches of central
Berlin. It was at this time that the East German authorities
authorized a plan by the architect Giinter Stahn to re-create
the
neighborhood.In addition to restoration of the church, the prol-
ect entailed the careftrl re-creation of entire .o*,, of krr.,g_
destroyeclhouses. Some of these coulcl lay claim to
particulfr
historical significance-the home of the eighteenth_century
 u,'riter Gotthold Ephrainr Lessing,for example-but most were
0 l d B erlin
simply typical examPles of rnerchants' houses from the seven-
tecnth antl eighteenth centuries.
The new-old Nikolai Quarter, finished in 1987 for the East's
'75Oth anniversarycelebration,contributed to the German Denlo-
cratic Republic's rediscoveryof history during the 1980s.During
these years, the German workers' state sought to place itself at
the end of a line of progressivedevelopment that passedthrough
Gennan history. Anniversaries,exhibitions, books, and (not least)
urban restorationscommemorated u'orthy predecessors,some of
rvhom tracl been deemed entirely unworthy not long before'
Frederick the Great, heretofore a militarist aggressor'n'as reha-
bilitated as promoter of the Enlightenment, and in 1980 his
equestrian statue was returned to its prominent sPot on Unter
der-rLinden. The recliscoveryof Prussiaas son'rethingother than
a lirunt of militarism also transforrnedBisnrarckfrom reactionary
oppressorof (lerrrran socialisminto incubator of the progressive
historical forces of bourgeois revolution.
Wherc dicl the Nikolai Quarter fit in? This neighborhood of
merchants testifiecl to the vigor of the new middle classat the
end of the Middle Ages, rising to pou'er in a feudal society and
thus illustrating (in the most basic Marxist theory) the bourgeois
revolution that was the prerequisitefor the proletarianrevolution
that the Recl Ar-my brought to Genlrany in 1945.+As inner-city
rcclevelopment,the Nikolai Quarter also contributed in a more
tangible rvay to the GDR's search for urban identity. It was one
of several projects East Berlin undertook during the 1980s to
revive its ir.rner city. Planners hoped that the Nikolai Quarter
rvould encourage tourists to linger after visiting the scattered
historical sites nearby, but it also containeclaPartmentsfor twcr
thousand privileged residentsin a part of tourr long uninhabited.
The visitor to the Nikolai Quarter {irst encounterslarge build-
ings u,ith uninviting concrete facades.They are intended to shield
the interior of the quarter from the traffic and noise on the wide
streets outside. Unhke the typical East German high-rise slabs,
the mass and forrn of these buildings are oriented to the streets
of the quarter. Some o[ them also mimic Renaissancegables in
their concrete rooflines. Only after passingthese buildings does
the pedestrian arrive in the quiet lanes of new houses that try
to imitate their vanisheil predecessorsin every detail. For many
people familiar with the old GDR, this painstakingeffort was a
galling sight. The Communist state had inherited many of the Ol d B erl i n
least bombed German cities after 1945; forty years later, com-
plete neglect had doomed many blocks of intact buildingsin the
centersof cities such as Haile, Erfurt, and Potsdam.Money and
attention that might have savedthem had insteadgone to Berlin.
For that matter, even in Berlin the so-calleclFishermen'sIsland,
the southern tip of old Cdlln, had survived fairly intact into the
1960s,when it u,asleveled to make way for high-rise apartment
buildings.For somewhat dilferent reasons,the Nikolai Quarter's
architecture was poorly received in the West. The concretc
buildingswere seenas ugly, the re-creationsas an offenseagainst
proper historical prcservation, the entire design as unalloyed
kitsch. The quality of the food and drink served in the many
caf6sar-rdrestaurantsoffered Western critics a final confrr-rnation
I
of their establishedbelief in the aesthetic bankruotcv of East
German Communism
gbltut this historical stage set is uniquely Communist,
-.-.--t=rttle-
however. In it, rather, we seea longing for urban tradition lbund
far beyond Berlin and Gennany. Indeed, tlie Nikolai Quarter's
transition to capitalismhas been relatively sn-rooth.Not painless,
of course:the privatization of businesses
and the setting of mar-
ket rents is never easy, and the summer of 1993 saw a heated
conflict between caf6 orvners seeking to expand the seasonal
beer-garclentrade and residentswho discoveredthat order, quiet,
and early closing hours were East Gerrnan customs they were
loath to surrender. fhey will probably have to adapt or move,
later if not sooner, since this socialistproject is a perfect haven
for free-enterprisetourism. West German intellectualsgcnerally
scorn the kitschy Altstiidte built out of the ruins of cities like
Cologneand Dilsseldorf,but tourists and businesstravelerscon-
tinue to patronize their bars.With the Nikolai Quarter, reunified
Berlin came with a ready-made Altstadt tliat quickly began to
absorb visitors from the West. The intellectuals rvill I'raveto
accept that visitors in searchof authentic old llerlin will find it
in the counterfeit form created by the East Ger-rnangovernment
during its final years.
A Tale of Two Palaces
Once we leave behind the Middle Ages, we find that historical
nostalgia in Berlin becomes politically explosive in rvays that
might dumbfound planners and preservationistselsewhere.The
Ol dB erlin identiliablebuilding blocks of German unity and identity can be 1674 a larger planned grid, Dorotheenstadt,
centeredon a granrl 0l d B erl i n
traccd back to the princes and tlynasties of the early motlern western boulevard,Unter den Linclen,r,r,hich
lecl from the iastle
era. Anrl all national spnbols, inch-rdingpalaces,are prizecl by to the prince's game park, the Tiergarten.
sor.nt:Gcnnans antl f'earedby others. Meanr'r'hile,he settled disp'tes lr"tru".n L'tl.rerans
ar.rcl
carvin-
The early filtecnth century marked the beginning of a ne'rv ists in 1654 by issuing an edict of religious
toleration_a rare
cra that u'orrld leavemore lastingtracesin the sandysoil of the practice at the time. This 14
p.oui valLrablein attracting
trvin towr-rs.I'hc Holy ll.oman Emperor granted tl.reterritory of skilled merchants, craftsmen, "di.t B erl i n,1737.S outh
and farmers to populate the ex_
l3ranrlenburgto Burgrave Fricclrich of the south German family is at the top of this
pancleclllerlin and neigliboring villages. Friedrich
Wilhelm ac_ map; thus the
of Flohcnzollem,and gavc Friedrich and his heirs the title of tively recruited persecuteclprotestants,
notably French Hugue_ tree-l i nedboul ev ard
elector of Branrlenburg. Although the territory was named after nots, anrl, with somervhatless open
arrns, Jervs expelled f.orr-r Unterden l-inden
an okler town to the rvest, Berlin-Crjlln had meanwl.rileemerge<l Vienna.
extendsfrom the
as the lcaclir.rgcomnrercial center of the sparselysettied region. 'Ihe Great
Elector was succeedeclin ldgg by his son, vicinityot the
'l'he lbllou,ing years were marked by tensions and disputes as Elector
Friedrich III, rvho immediately founded roy alpal ac e
a fifth tou,n, Friedrich_
dre citizensof Berlin arrd Colln fought to protect their legal rights stadt, larger than the others and laid {center)west to
out in blocks extending
against Friedrich anil his successors,rvho sotrght tcl establisha soutlr from Unter den Lindc,n.In 1".,09, the B randenburg
he officially united tl.rcse
firmcr hoid ovcr dreir subjects.In 1442, the elector compelled five to.rvr.rs Gatekight).
into a single city of Berlin (fig. 14).
Courtesyof
C6lln to hand over lancl on the northern part of the island for Friedrich failed to match his father,ssuccesses
in tliplomacv [andes bi l ds tel
e.l
construction of a castle from u,hich ]re could asserthis authority.
lly tlie end of tl're century, the castle had become the permanent
residenceof the electors of Brandenburg. Berlin and Colln had
lost the independenceprized by medieval tou,nspeople,and had
become entirely sub.iectto the ruler's will. That was a great blow
to their prosperity as well as their pride; in this feudal era
of (lennan history, it u,as nc,rtthe capital cities but the liee
cities-Frankfurt, Nr.rremberg,Atrgsburg-that flourished.
In the scventeenth century, however, the electorate of llran-
rlcnburg emergcd as one of the most porverful German principali-
ties. It r.vasin this age, rvl.richrve associatervith the principles
and practices of absolutism, that princes strovc to make their
resirlencesinto capital cities. Berlin was no exception, despite
the clevastationit (along rvith much of Germany) sufl'eredduring
the Thirty Years'War ( l6l 8-48). The electorFrieclrichWilhelm,
,,vho came to the throne of Brandenburg in G+0, liur t
"""
known since his lifetime as the Great Elector. Through diplomacy
anclmilitary posturing, more ttfa-nih.""gli .""quest, he
"r-rlurg..l
I'risterritorial holdings while strengtheninghis control over them.
As part of his mercantilist policies of promoting domestic trade
ancl industry, he also sponsoredthe expansionof Berlin. To the
two walled towns of Berlin and Cdlln he added a third and a
fourtfr: in 1662, Friedricl.rsrverder,just rvest of Ccilln, and in
d Berlin ant{ expansion.More interested in establishinga grand court, he
,li(I *ur1ug" to score one important success:he acquired the title
of king. He obtained his crown through complicated ciiplomatic
maneuvers. German sovereign princes were electors, grand
dukes, counts, and many other things, but not kings, because
they rvere nominally subordinate to the Holy Roman Emperor'
Friedrich, however, took advantageof the fact that Brandenburg
had acquired the duchy of Prussia,which lay to the east, outside
the Holy Roman Empire's borders. After currying favor with
the emperor, Friedrich was granted the right to crown himself
Friedrich I, "King in Prussia," iu the Prussiancity of KohT$s6erg
(,lo* Rrrriu.r l(i;mg*a) in,1701\(Not "King o;f Prussia"be-
.,.. ,_--J
'
callse part of Prussiabelonged to the polish crown.) Thus ciid
0l d B erl i n
Berlin becomea royal capital, of a kingdom named for a territory
far to the east.
Friedrich recognizedthat art and learning coulcl also contrib-
ute to the glory ofa grand court. But his qr..r, SophieCharlotte,
deservescredit for the establishmentof the royal academiesof
arts and sciences(the latter first headed by the philosopher
Leibniz). Friedrich also left a substantialphysicallegacyrn Berlin.
Most important was his expansionof the royai palace.His six-
teenth-century predecessorshad turned the medieval fortress
into a Renaissancepalace on the Colln sicleof the Spree,but it
was Friedrich who sponsoredan enormous extensionof the pal-

15
R o y a lp a l a cea n d
P a l a c eBr id g e ,
1 9 1 3C
. o u d e syo l
i
I e.
landesbildstel
ffi

i,;ii
Yr,
,,,;:i;
Ol dBet lin ace to the west, acrossthe entire breadth of oltl Colln. He found
a giftcd sculptor anci architect, Andreas Schltiter, to design the
ne,"vbuilding, beginning in 1698. Schliiter atlded a courtyard
encloscd by new and renovated vvings on the west side o[ the
old palace. 'fhe courtyard and the exterior portals rvere richly
decorated lvith sculpture. His design has beerl praised as a mas-
tenvork-even the masterwork-of northern baroque architec-
ture, eflirsively sculptural but more restrained than the better-
knourr baroque of southern Europe (fig. t S). Its long and ornate
f'acadcs,four stories and 100 feet high, establishedthe final scale
of the palace and-it has been argued-of all Berlin architec-
ture. A seconcl,larger courtyard and extension lvas subseqtlently
dcsigned in the same style by other architects, chiefly Johann
Friedrich Eosanclervon Gcithe. Eosanderand others also built a
palace sevcral miles lvest of town for Queen Sophie Charlotte.
After her dcath it rvould be named Charlottenburg.
By Friedrich's cleath in 1713, the royal palace had largely
taken on the form it u'ould have for more than two centuries.
Each succeeclingking, horvever, had his architects renovate and
adapt the palace to contemporary tastes and needs.The largest
later addition ,"vasa massivedome (1845-53) clesigned by August
Sttilcr, rising to a height of 232 feet over Eosander'swestern
portal. It sat atop the royal chapel and has been interpreted as
the pious King Friedrich Wilhelm IV's reactionary resPonseto
tl.re threatening tendencies of the modern world (in particular
to thc revolution of 1848). Otl-rershave seen it more benignly
as an attempt to rnaintain the palace'sprofile in a rapidly growing
city.
In the early 1700s,horvever, the twelve-laundred-roompalace
dominatecl a fairly small city. (After lalling by half during the
Thirty Years' War, the populatior-rtripled uncler the Great Elec-
tor anrl tripled again during Friedriclt I's reign, but at 60,000 it
u,as still about a tenth the size of London or Paris.) While
nrlers came and went-and olien lived elselvhere-the palace's
physicalpresenccdefined the city center, linking old Berlin across
the Spree with the new, planned extensions to the rvest. The
architects of all neu, buildings had to take account of it. Domi-
nated by its neu, sections, the palace'sorietrtation \l'as now to
the rvest. lts nelv f-academarked the easteru terminus o[ Unter
dcn Linden, u'hich during the eighteendr century became the
grar.rdaxis of royal Berlin. Tl-re intersection of boulevard al.rd
palace,at an oblique angle, becamethe pivotal point of Berlin,s
Ol d B erl i n
urban space.The samc spot looms large ir-rdie planning
of thc
reunifiedGerman capitalin the 1990s.
Among Friedrich I's successors,three may be singleclout fbr
their notable contributions to the parace'simmedilte
'icinity.
l.ledrrch II (ruled li40-g6), grandsonof his namesakeand b.:i_
ter-fiFperhaps not more accurately) known as Frederick
the
SI.lt, \\/asno great lover of the palaceand .eride,l th.ie ilf..-
quentlylHis major contribution to Berlin urbanism is locatecl
a
ferv steps down Unter den Linden. The ,,Forum Fridericianum,,
is a complex of buildings centered on unter ilen Linden
and an
adjoining square.It consistsof four buildings from Frecrerick
the
Great's reign, not built accor.dingto a unilie,I plan (as
originally
foreseen)but nonethelessan impressiveensemble.The
stafe op_
era house designed by Georg Wenzeslaus ,ron
Knobelsdorff
(ll4l-43) was the first opera house anyrvhere built as a free_
standing1>uilding.Behinclit, St. Hedwig\ Oathedral(|j41_:3),
rvith its low dome modeled on Ro-.k pantheon,
is a Roman
Catholic church built by Frederick the Great as a gesture
of
recor.rciliationrvith the catholic inhabitants of the piovince
of
Silesia,which his armies seizedfrom Austria. Across
Unter den
Llnd1n stands the palaceof the king's brother, prince
Heinricl.r,
which has housedBerlin's universitysince its founding
in 1810.
Across the square from the opera house is the curvejlacatle
of
the former royal library (nicknamed, in typical Beriin
fasliion,
the "Commode"), built accorclingto an old clesign
for Vienna,s
Hofburg palaceby the baroquearchitect
JosephElanuel Fischer
von Erlach. A later addition in the middle of Llnter
iren Lincrenis
the nineteenth-centuryequestrianstatue of Freclerick
tr.reGreat,
which the East Germans banishedto potsclamin
1950 and re_
turned in 1980.Although the opera housealone
has been badly
damagedand rebuilt three tintes, this ensemble
is happilv intaa
and certain to remain so. The only touchy subjects
rvere two
plaquesput up by the GDR. one commemorated I-enin,s
visit
to dre library; it has vanished.The other commemorates
*,hat
happenedin the squareon May 10, 1933, rvhen
a Nazi bonfirc
consumed "un-German" books. It r,r,ill apparently
remain, al_
though reunified Germany has added it, o,".,
gesture, a sunken
memorial to the book-burning under glass in the
center of the
square.
Tl-re immediate surroundings of the palace took their final
Ol dB erlin monarchist sentiment or out of a desire to distance the new
government symbolically lrom the monarcl'ry. That is, unlike
n'ranyformer monarchies,it did not give the palacea new, high-
profile use as, for example, a presidential residence.It employed
the vast building for various purposes,mainly as museum space.
The Third Reich made fevg changes;it, too, declined to occupy
the palace'ssyrnbolic space.
I'he next regime was lbrced to make more difficult decisions.
By 1945, bombs had seriously darnagedmuch of the palace and
burned out most of it. It \\'as not a complete ruin, however, as
evinced by four public exhibitions held in intact rooms between
1946 and 1948,r.r'hilethe city u,asunder four-power occupation.
In i948, horvever, the municipal government was reorganizeclas
four-po,,ver control broke dornrn.In the Soviet sector, German
Communists took firm control. Plansto rebuild Berlin as a social-
ist city took form in July 1950 at the Third Party Congressof
the SocialistUnity Party (the name of the governing Communists
after they absorbed the Social Dcmocratic Party in tl.re Soviet
zone). In his speechto the Congress,Walter Lllbricht, the party's
general secretary and undisputed leader, declared, "The center
of our capital, the Lustgarten ancl the area of the palace'sruins,
must become a grand square for demonstrations, upon which
our people's rvill for struggle and for progress can find expres-
sion."S On August 23, the government decreed the palace'sde-
molition.
This decision unleasheda storm of indignation in East as well
as West Berlin. Protests came from prominent art historians in
EastGerrnany,notably Richard Hamann, an authority on baroque
art u,ho had come to East Berlin's Humboldt University after
his retirement in West Germany. Hamann, keen to preserve a
great architectural monument, argued that revolution and social-
ism u'ere no enemies of old buildings: "The l-ouvre in l)aris has
sun,ived all revolutions, ancl the Kremlin in Moscow, likewise
the former seat of forces opposed by the government, is still
today the seat of government."6 Public replies from responsible
oflicials did not challengesuch claims. T'hey clefendedtheir deci-
sion solely on the grounds that thc palacewas too badiy damaged
to be rebuilt. Mayor Friedrich Ebert (son of the Weimar Repub-
lic's lirst president) assuredHamann, "lf tlie palacewere still
r-rndestroyerl)no one would have seriously consitleretl tearing it
56 clou,n. Since, however, tl-re English and American bombing at-
tacks have left tlie palace eighty percent destroyed, as expert Ol d B erl i n
opinion l-rasdetermined," there were only three choices.To leave
the ruins standing woulcl not be possible,"since the new Berlin
rnust not become a city of ruins like Rome." To repair them
would cost far too much in light of the city's other pressing
obligations.Hence the clecisionto clear away the ruins.T
Ebert's allocationof blame typified the early Coid War: Hitler
bore some responsibility,but the main source of troubles rvasthe '/
current capitalistenemy. EastBerlin newspaperarticlespublished
during thesedaysechoedthe party line. According to the Tligliche
Aundschau, "The destruction of this monument by American
bombers was an act of cultural infamy that Berlin rviil long
remember." The Norionol-Zeitung wrote of "the barbaric vandal-
ism of their flight crews, for rvhom unrestraineddestructionwas
a mere matter of sport ancl of business,and from which they
returned home with briefcasesstuffed with dollars."81On" *on-
ders how the crews could have managed such feats. Here rve
seem to have an overzealousCommunist editor furiously mixing
party-line metaphors.) But the question of blame was clearly
besidethe point. For rvhateverreasons,preservationofthe palace
was not a high priority. In fact, it appearsthat the palace'scrucial
location in the city-so important to its defenders-sealed its
fate. Elsewhere ruins might be left for future disposition, but
not at the vital center of the capital. The dynamiting began on
September6, 1950. Despite official assurancesto the contrary,
salvageableparts of the palace $,ere not reerected elsewhere,
with a single exception.
The removal of the ruins took months, but once they were
gone the way was clear for construction of a reviewing stand
from which Ulbricht and his colleaguescor-rldsurvey their grand
detnonstrationsof proietarian power. While plans for new, mon-
umental buildings came and rvent (see chapter 5), little changed
fcrr yearson the site. As the proletarian will becamelessdemon-
strative (or as the GDR became more bourgeois),the palace's
site came to be used for parking the proletariat's diminutive
Trabant automobiles.The cathedral, museum, and arsenal,the
other main buildings on the Lustgarten (now, in its expanded
lbrm, renamedMarx-Engels-Platz),remained.Across the Spree's
western ann, Schinkel'sBauakaclemie sat in limbo until 196i,
then was razed to make way for the long white slab of the new
foreign ministry. To the south, a neu' Council of State building 57

: =a - a----- :'*l;.,r:-.,,:--"-:
--
16 was also built during the 1960s.Into its facadervas incorporated
Man-Engels-Plau one o[ Eosander'sbaroque portals-the only piece of the palace
and Palaceol the
_that was indeed reerected, not for its architectural signifrcance,
Bepublic,1995
but because Karl Liebknecht had stood on it to proclaim the
socialistrepublic of Germany on November 9, 1918.Liebknecht
was one of the pantheon o[ GDR heroes;in the following weeks
he hacl helped to found the German Communist Party and been
munlered by natior-ralistsoldiers.
l'hus we come to the clamor for rebuilding the palace-
almost. The matter was enormously complicated by one more
encumbranceon the site. In the 1970s,after having failed to act
on all the grand schemes proposed over the years, the GDR
finally constructed its new building atop the palace's site. By
virtue of its location, if not its size or appearance,this "Palace_-
. of.the Rgpublic" became the old city center's most prominent
sJructure.Designed by an architectural collective under the lead-
''ership of Heinz Graffunder, the building did not loom especially
large in the enormous square.It took up only one side of Marx-
Engels-Platz,covering approxirnately the site of the Renaissance
palace, thus leaving a vast space-a parking lot most of the
time-bordered by it, the Council of State building, and the
foreign ministry. In most respects the exterior of the Palaceof
the llepubiic would not stand out in a suburban office park. It
was not a cheap building, but its grandeur took the form of Ol d B erl i n
high-glossinternational modernism (fig. 16). It was a rectangular
box clad in white marble and bronze reflective glass; the best
view of the cathedral was its reflection in this glass.
The Palaceof the Republic accommodatedan array of spaces
and uses. One auditorium served as the meeti.,g piu.. oi th.
East German parliament, a body that met infrequently ancl had
as little public visibility as it had power. A five-thousand_seat
assemblyhall hosted more conspicuousbut less frequent meet_
ings such as party congressesand conventions of the national
youth organization.The same hall was equally prominent, how-
ever, for the popular concerts held there, notably the infrequent
(and hence legendary)appearancesby Western rock musicians.
The building also included other spacesfor meetings, concerts,
and theater performances,as well as restaurants,caf6s, and a
bowling alley. Perhaps nowhere else in the world did a parlia_
ment share quarters with a bowling alley.
In 1990, the building briefly became a center of attention.
After the fall of the Communist regime, the new, freelv elected
parliament becamethe state's ..ul
lou"rnrnent; here, or.,Augur,
23, 1990, exactly forty years after the decision to raze the old
, ,..,
palace,it voted to join the Federal Republic. Then came a twist /
of fate, the symbolism of which seemsmore farcical than tragic.
Just two weeks before the parliament-and the state-r,r.o-uld
ceaseto exist, an official inspection declared the building hope_
lessly contaminated with asbestosand ordereil it cioserl ancl
1
sealed.And so it continr.redto stand for years,in many eyesthe
\
symbolic legacy of a poisonousstate.
In March of 1993 came a decision to tear it down, but-as
with the old palacein 1950,and innumerablerecent cases-drat
only heated up the public debate.By no means all opponentsof
rebuilding the royal palacewanted to preservethe palaceof the
Republic, but the empty GDR showpiece and the ghost of its
baroque predecessorwere competing for the same site. We can
see rival nostalgiasat work in the efforts of their respective
advocates.Those who longed for a return of the royal palace
wished to restore not the monarchy (though one could p.oUulrty
find a few monarchistsamong them), but rather a cityscapeand
with it a civic wholenessthat had been lacking since 1950, or
1933,or 1918.Those who wished to keep the buildingthat was
there, the Palaceof the Republic, may have had ...tui., practical
0l d Be rlin considerationson their side, but their deeper wishes were no
lessfixcd or-rthe past. They ditl not want to restore thc Commu-
nists to power (though in this case there probably were a I'erv
morc cxceptions),but they sought to hold onto certainuemories
and cxperiencesof life in the Communist state. A third group
that r.r'antedto u'ipe the sqtrare clean ancl start anew might
presentitself as free from theselongings,but others have imputed
to it yet another nostalgia: for the heroic architecture of the
1920sthat claimed the ability to createa new urbau world. The
motivations on all sides cleservemore careful attention, which
rvill help us better understanclwhat is at stake in their polemics.
The palacemockup that stood during 1993and 1994probably
markcd the high point of the debate. The scaf(bldingextended
rvcstrvard from the empty Palace of the Republic; a team of
Parisian art str,rdentspainted Schltiter's and Eosander'sfacades
on strips of canvas rvliich were then mounted on the outside.
Sir-rcctl.re Palace of thc Republic (like the Renaissanceportion
of the old palace)extended farther to the north than the baroque
rving, ar-radditional scaf'foldcovered the exposedpart of its rvest-
en.r facadeand a mirror was mounted on it to give the illusion
of a continuous baroque facarle longer than had in fact ever
existed.Inside the enclosedspace\4/asroom lbr summer concerts
antl ltlr a large exhibition on the history and future clf the palace.
All of this r.r'asprivately {inancecl-a most unusual initiative in
Gcnnany-by an organizationcspeciallycreatedfor the purpose.
-fhough the exhibition's organizers strove to present different
icleasabout future plans for the site, the driving force clearly lay
u,ith proponents of rebuilding the palace, led by a Han-rburg
businessman,Wilhelm von Bo<ldien.They were rewarded with
large crowils of visitors willing to pay nine marks to view the
exhibition. And they rvere further rervardetl: the exhibition and
,
\ the sight of the mockup generateda wave o1'popularenthusiasm
idea of reconstruction. Even many who opposed recon-
llbr the
istruction on one principle or another admittecl being moved at
Ithe sight of the resplendent baroque facade on a sunny day.e
Especially in 1993, an enorrnous amount of ink and breath
rvas expendeclin arguments about the two palaces.A look at
I the arguments reveals several issuesat stake, but these issues-
. architectural aesthetics,urban form, civic and national identity,
'-\ historical presen'ation, historical justice-u'ere l.ropelessly
inter-
trvined with one another. 'fhe confusion was unavoidable:these
argumentsabout buildings and squaresare inevitably arguments Ol d B erl i n
about history and identity.
Some of the arguments were in fact explicitly about politics
'l'hosewho were outragedover the Commur.rists'
and s)rr-rbolism.
V
act of destruction sar",reconstruction as an act of justice. " fhe
foul Comn-runistcrime must be reversecl!"commented a Vicn-
nesevisitor to the exhibition, adding that "German societyr-recds
to regain a healthy self-confidence."As another visitor wrote in
the comment book, anything short of reconstruction "would be
a Gerrrrananti-historicalvindication of the Red explosivesexpert
Walter Ulbricht." This thirst for justice (or vengeance)had a
particular historical context: a rebuilt palacer"'ould represent a
declaration of victory in the Colcl War. One of the palace's
leading proponents, the journalist Joachim Fest, put particular
r,veightor-rtl.reCommunists'justification for destroyingthe palace
in 1950: they had rvantedto create a Red Squareto clemonstrate
their control of the masses."ln the worldwide conflict that lies
behind us, not the least of our goals was to prevent the advance
of that kind of control. If the destruction of the palace was
supposedto be the symbol o[ its victory, reconstructionu'oulcl
be the s;anbolof its lailure."ro
Would it not be possible to erase the Red Square-cum-
parking lot, actually and sl,rnbolically,u'ithout rebuilding the okl
palace?Fest is certainly right about the significanceof the site
in Ulbricht's mind. However, as we have seen, the Communist
leaders did not admit to any enmity toward the palace itself.
Fest's argument sprang in part from his conviction that the
Communists intended the destruction of the palaceas a s).nnbolic
death blow to Prussianmilitarism. Certainly some German Com-
munists hated the building for its historical syrnbolism.One can
speculate that self-hatred was at work: that Lllbricht and his
fellow Communists took out on the palace their rage at tl're
failure of revolutionariesto changethe courseof German liistory.
But the architect Heinrich Moldenschardt,who made this argu-
ment, also turned it againstconservativeproponentsof rebuilding
the royal palace.He saw self-hatred arising lrom their senseof
responsibilityfor the Third Reich and suggestedthat the return
of the royal palace would soothe "the repressedrecognition of
having brougl-rt at least the clestruction of the palace upon
"ll
oneself.
A rebuilt palacervould celebratevictory in the Cold War by
)ldBerlin clynamicsof tserlin precisely becauseotl'rer parts of the city were
developedlvith an orientation to the palaceand, later, to Marx-
Engcls-Platz. Indeeil, the historical importance of the site is
surely beyond tlispute. But its lirture role in a nonroyal, non-
comrnunist capital remains to be determined. Those who seek
to maintain the importance of the site hope to link the twenty-
first-century capital to its pre-tr,r'entieth-centuryforebears. In
light of Berlin's history in the twentieth century, that is an
unclerstandablebut nonethelesscontroversial desire.
Some r'r'hoargued for the importance of the site $'ent on to
assertthat only the baroque palacecoulcJfilI the void there. This
conclnsion ma<leno senseto the architectural historian Tilmann
Budclcnsieg:"lf you sce this only as urban repair, then please
leave out the Prussian and the historical elements of the br"rild-
ing." lluddensieg opted for starting anerv: if the need is for a
building u'orthy of the site, "then we can have it built by a
modcrn architcct."ls But here we come up against the sour
reputation o[ modern architecture. For many, the old palacewas
the bcst solution precisely because they could not imagine a
modern building that rvould not prove an embarrassment.The
1993 exhibition convinced many visitors-or confir-rnedthem in
their view-that reconstructing the old rvas preferableto creat-
ing the new. The comment books u,ere filled with sweeping
condemnationsof modern architecture.
The publisher Wolf Jobst Siedler vi'asthe most articulate ex-
t\
ponent of this point of vievr'. Siedler, though a West Berliner,
was clearly no single-minded opponent of Comrnunist architec-
ture: for decades he had passionatelyattacked Western urban
ilevelopment lbr the destruction it u.rought on Berlin and other
cities. FIe could praise the great modernist architectsof the early
-trventieth century for the man,elousbuildings they created, "but
nowhere dicl this generation succeedin giving forrn to the center
_ _ofa city."r6 Siedl"r and many others believe-thisis-aTasliEd-clern-
isnihas-never mastereil: hence. $'e must look to earlier eras for
guidance. Moreover, Siedler added, the entire vicinity of the
palaceconsistedof buildings designedw,ith an awarenessof and
an orientation to the palace'sdominant presence.According to
Siedlcr, for example, Schinkel intended the classicalsimplicity of
his museum to offer a clialoguervith Schltiter's intricate baroque
forms. -fhus, only the palace would restore what was left of
central Berlin to any kind of visual coherence.
For others, particularly architects, this conclusion amounted OldBerlin
to an admissionof defeat by contemporary architectureand per-
haps a declaration of despair in the face of the modern worlcl.
Siedler did not entirely disagree:whereashis opponents contin-
ued to "believein the geniusof the new,"l? his sidewas skeptical.
It was with "melancholy" and "resignation" that he declaredhis
support for rebuilding the palace.
Perhapsa gesture of resignation,even of despair,would not
be the most inappropriate symbol of the new German capital,
but it lvould not be a popular one, and such a sentiment surely
did not explain the enthusiasmfor rebuilding the royal palace.
Nostalgia,rather, was at work. Nostalgia for rvhat? As part of
his plea for rebuilding the palace,Joachim Fest wrote a beguiling
description of the palace'sfomer role in Berlin life. Unlike most
palaces,he observed, it was both a public place and part of
the neighborhood, only steps away from ordinary houses and
workshops, psychologicallyapproachablebecauseof Schliiter's
inviting facadesand physicallyapproachablebecausemost of the
time anyonecould passthrough the inner courtyard.lsFestmakes
his readersfeel the pain of the building's loss,and he also makes
the point that the palace was not only-perhaps not even pri-
marily-the king's house. The palace made the pieces of oid
Berlin fit together.
In the absenceof a king, this fortunate combination of uses
cannot be recovered, so what, exactly, vvouldbe rebuilt? fhe
practical answer was that only the facade-and probably not all \.;
of that-would be reconstructed. The palace'sfriends agreed-
that rebuilding the inlsr-i61-1he magnificent d-rronerooms and
ballrooms-would be pointlessas well as impossible,since there
\
lvould be no use for them. But they did believe that the city
\
center needed the palace facade to help heal wounds and to
I
restore a coherent urban identity. Opponents countered that a I
palacefacadewould represshalf a century of historical memory
and create the illusion of a continuity and wholenessthat had
never existed: "Neither in a monumental nor in a political sense
could a palace function today as the city's crorvning glory. For
it would be-in the sense of its original purpose-empty. It
t ,,.-
would be an utterly misguidedsymbol for this state: an architec= ('
trJra[ fulgh-_19_1[e and an enorrnous encouragemqrt_fbr /
ryht
restorative-te,nd.n.i*r-i"-;.;i;tf ii A; bA afiiriiied'that this is
one of the palacelobby's intentions."l' uu
l d Berlin This outburst came from a journalist writing for a respectable
newspaper. Its imPutation that the palace
miclclle-o1'-the-road
debate was really about right-wing politics should not surprise
anyonewho knows that deep philosophicaland political divisions
lurk just beneath the surface of German debatesabout form and
identity, including debates about architectural form and urban
identity. Many on the German left are deeply suspiciousof any-
thing reeking of nostalgia lor the oid Germany: horv can anyone
be nostalgic about German history? (Foreignersare likely to nocl
their heads in agreement at this point.) Nostalgia, according to
this thinking, implies a denial of inconvenient facts, in particular,
an exclusion from German history of the Third Reich and the
GDR. And behind this selectivity lurks a conservativestrategy
to cleanseand unleashthe left's b6te noire, German nationalism.
What does this have to do with the royal palace?Its defenders
u,ould protest that the palace is not a symbol of Prussianmilita-
rism or German chauvinism-and they would be largely correct.
The palace rvas essentially completed prior to the death o[
Friedrich I, before one can discern anything resemblingPrussian
militarism or German nationalism. Severallater kings livecl there
seldornor never-including Wilhelm I, who presided over Ger-
man unifrcation ancl rvas the first Hohenzollern to be called
cmperor. Also-an important if rarely voiced argument for the
palace'sfr1"nd5-i1 can be seen as uncontaminated by tl're stain
of Nazisrn.It played essentiallyno role in the Third Reich. Hitler,
wary of any sentiment to restore the monarcl-ry,shunned the
building.
Nevertheless,the attempt to salvageGerman traditions has
been a project associatedrvith the political right, despite some
similar efforts by the GDR in dre Honecker years.And the same
political divisions carriecl over, by and large, to the debate over
the royal palace.Berlin's Christian Democratsendorsedits recon-
struction. The Social Democrats tlid not, leaning toward the
support for the Palace of the Republic representedmost vehe-
mently by Eastern-basedleftist opposition grouPs.
The lines in the debate over the two palaceswere in large
part determined by West German polemics about the Third
l{eich and Gennan history in the 1980s,the so-calledhistorians'
debate.One aspect of that debate involveclthe left accusingthe
right of trying either to justify the Third Reich or to exPunge
its crimes from German history. The kind of history mistrusted
by the left was exemplified by the Christian Democrats'parlia- OldBerlin
mentary leader, Alfred Dregger, r,r'hoboasted that he, likc his
American allies,had fought in the 1940sto saveWestern civiliza-
tion from the tide of Bolshevism.(Dregger was a Wehrrnacht
officer on d.reeasternfront.)
Similarly, after 1989 the left accused the right of trying to
remove the GDR from the history of postwar Germany.Conser-
vatives, suspectedof sympathy for aspectsof the Third Reich,
in turn saw an affinity for Soviet-stylesocialismbehind opposi-
tion to the royal palace.As one visitor wrote in the comment
book at the 1993 palaceexhibition: "Whoever is fundamentally
againsta reconstruction of the palace today puts himself at the
samelevel as the narolr,-minded philistinesUlbricht, the Social-
ist Unity Party, and companv." But was the proper ans\l/erro
Ulbricht's crime to undo it, or to avoid doing it again?Many
pagesaway in the comment book someoneelse wrote that those
who want to raze the Palaceof the Republic ,.areat the aesthetic
and moral ler.el of Ulbricht and his apparachiks."In any case,
Ulbricht was the standard of vituperation. Disagreementarose
over how best to inscribe the differentiation from the GDI{ in
the urban fabric.
Proponentsof reconstruction cited many examplesof projects
they saw as comparable._Their favorite was postwar Warsaw, a
city much more thoroughly destroyeclthan Berlin. Although (or
because)there was virtually nothing left standing in the center
of their capital, the Polish leadershipdecided soon after the war
to undertake a careful restoration of the royal palace and the
adjoining Old Town, returning it as closely as possible to its
prewar appearance.The reconstructed buildings represente<lan
obvious statement of national pride and defiance in the face of
near obliteration. Statementsof what might appearto be German
national pride, however, make many people nervous-not least
many Germans. Moreover, it is a dilferent matter to envisage
the reconstruction of a building gone for nearly half a centuf,,,
one remembered firsthand by relatively few Berliners.The fact
that this would be contemplatedis itself evidenceof a remarkably
strong historical senseat work in the city. The obvioushistorical
precedent for such an undertaking was in sight just acrossthe
river: the Nikolai Quarter. Ilut the palace's proponenrs never
mentioned it. Praise for any GDR project rvould presumably
have been seen as tainting the palaceproposal.
 in EastBerlin may have been decisivein the victory of the fomrer Ol d B erl i n
ll d Be rlin The lapse of trvo generations-evinced by thc presence of
group shortly afterward. With a few notable exceptionsleft de-
the Palaccof the Republic-separatetl the royal palacelrom any
liberately as ruins, West llerlin by the 1950shad chosen either
conventional r-rnderstandir-rgof historical preservation' Preserva-
and bureaucratized,giving pres- obliteration or repair for all its major buildings. Things moved
tion has becomeprol'essionalizecl
'fhe profession- more slowly in the East,br.rtthe result rvasnot radically different
ervationistsa distinct identity ancl point of vierv.
in the long run, although some Western observersthought the
als did not rerspondfavorably to the idca ofre-creating the palace.
GDR too flexible with its heritage-for example, in reerectir-rg
Current practices ancl theories of preservatiou have their roots
old buildings on different sites.Many ruins still stood after 1970,
in the nineteenth centttry's grou'ing a\ /areness of historical
but most of them had been slated for reconstruction. Even on
char.rgcan<l decay, manifested in the Romantic fascinationwith
the overgrown remnants of'August Stiiler's New Museum (the
ruins as u,ell as the consciousre-use of many historical styles of
slightly newer neighbor of Schinkei's Olcl Museum) work had
architccture. Schinkcl himself played an important role in earlv
begun-just barely-by 1989.
el-fortsto protect historical monuments in Gennany. But it'rT'as
Berlin's preservationistssaw the proposed reconstruction of
Schinkcl'sidea (fortunatcly never realized)to rebuild the Acropo-
the royal palace as a clear case of the f-alsificationof history.
lis in Athcns as a royai paiace.A few years later, the Englishman
For them, and fbr other opponents, the project amounted to a
John Ruskin taught ttrat past rvorks ofart are uniqtte and irrepro-
declaration that the entire existenceof East Germany had been
duciblc, ancl that they should therefore be preserved, not re-
some kind of aberration,not worthy of mention anrl best wiped
storecl.This practice slorvly caught on and u'as encoded in theo-
the from the urban tableau. Meeting at the old State Library just
ries of prescrvatiou aror-tnd the turn of the century-in
for example, by Alois Riegl and Georg down Unter den Linden while the canvasfacadewas going up,
German-speakinglands,
many of them scorned the effort to eraseauthentic tracesof one
l)ehio.
history in order to re-create a different one. For the preserva-
l'he flundamentalsof modeyp pfeservationistpractice still cle-
tionists, the proper course of action was to keep the Palaceof
rive from these notions of histo,ricalauthenticity. The only irn-
the Republic, an authentic, existing monument. The coaiition of
portant change over the past century has been a gradual exPan-
)I that building's friends thus comprised professional preserva-
sion of the class of structures or relics deemed worthy of
I tionists in East and West, nostalgic lbnner East Germans, and
,' prescrvation: from inclividual u,orks of genius, to ensemblesof
left-leaning Westerners opposed to whitewashing Gerrnan his-
buildings, to any artifacts of an era, and from a desire to preserve
"| tory. The result was a fairly clear division along party lines. In
the vcry old to an interest in any style or epoch no longer
current. Belief in the authenticity of the original artifact has January 1992, word got out that the city's preservationburear-r
was contemplating the designationof the Palaceof the Republic
remainerlconstant among preservationists,but the enormous de-
as a historical landmark. It was. after all. the site of the GDR's
struction of World War II forced a rethinking of their practices
historic decisionto join the FederalRepublic in i 990. One of the
in Germany and otl.rer European countries. So much had been
leadingChristian Democratsin the Berlin legislatureimmediately
lost so qrrickly; ruins rvere the spectacle of daily life, not the
denouncedany protection for this "architectural monstrosity" as
exccptional remintlcrs o[ a distant past. Compromiseswith prin-
an expression of "historical ignorance."2o(lgnorance of which
ciple, backed up by overwhelming public sentiment, pelrnitted
history? Note that both sides make this charge.) His party and
the restoration or, in a ferv notable cases,the complete recon-
struction of destroyed buildings. the Free Democrats declared their firm opposition to the move
(and threatened to fire the city preservationist),rvhile the Social
In l3erlin, for example, those who lvanted to save the royal
I)emocrats announcedthat preservationwas "acceptable" and a
palacein 1950 did not proposc to leave it as a ruin. In West
representativeof the leftist Green Party accusedthe Christian
Berlin, the same was true of the Charlottenburg palace: the
debate rvas betrveen proponents of restoration and those who Democrats ar-rdFree Democrats of politicizing preservationjust

rleclareclit irretrievably lost. The demolition of the royal palace as the GDR had.2r 69
68
lldBerlin Among the general public, enthusiasticsuPPortersof a rebuilt
palacepresumably cared little about the preservationists'notions
of authenticity. The more thoughtful proponents of reconstruc-
tion had a reply, however. Siedler,Fest,and Boddien all conceded
that a rebuilt palace would lack authenticity, but they denied
that the concept had any relevance. Siedler noted that Unter
den Linden today is a row of counterfeit buildings, some (like
the Opera House) damaged and rebuilt more than once. "The
architectural history of Berlin, like that of Europe, is a history
t/' of counterfeils"-vlhs1her Goethe's house in Frankfurt, the
campanile in Venice, or the so-called crown prince's palace on
Unter den Linden, which was totally destroyed during the war
and then rebuilt from scratch twenty years later by the East
Germans.Boddien added that the sameinauthenticity would also
apply to the Palace of the Republic if it were stripped to its
frame to remove the asbestos and then restored to its earlier
upp.u.u.r""."
Few voices defended the Palaceof the Republic on aesthetic
grounds; many condemned it as an eyesore.Most preservationists
believeaestheticargumentsshould not be decisivein determining
a building's historical value. In any case, they had good reason
to be suspicious of assertionsthat Honecker's palace was just
plain ugly. As the preservationistspointed out, similar-looking
buildings in the West were never torn down just becausethey
were unattractive (much as one might wish it!). On the other
side, aclvocatesof reconstructing the royal palacerecognizedthat
the sheer beauty of the old building-at best only partly repro-
ducible-was not a suffrcient reason for rebuilding it.
No party and no principle could claim a clear victory here.
In the absenceof any consensus,government budget cuts becarne
decisive,forcing cancellationof plans to construct new buildings
and to demolish old ones. In 1995, the decision to tear down
the Palaceof the Republic was reversed,leaving undecided how
the asbestoswould be removed, what the building would be
used for, and what its long-term ProsPectswere. The new lease
on life for the Communists' vacant palace also left Marx-Engels-
Platz empty, except for its ghosts.
Gate
TheBrandenburg
In a paradox typical of contemporary Berlin, suPPortersof the
royal palace drew sustenancefrom the disdain for the building
expressedby some of its owners. This strengthenedtheir argu- 0ld Berlin
ment that the palace represented first and foremost the city
center, not the king's house. After the death of its main patron,
Friedrich I, in 1713, the palacewas in fact shunned by many of
the rulers that local patriots would most like to forget, from
Friedrich Wilhelm I to Adolf Hitler.
Among the words that do not come to mind to describe
Friedrich I's son and successorare charming,dashing,contempla-
tive, and generous.Friedrich Wilhelm I hated his father-in this
he was a true Hohenzollern-and scornedhis parents' ambitions
as patrons of the arts and the sciences.Facing large debts, the
new king drasticallycut royal expenditures,rvhich meant cancel-
ing further plans to expand the palace. His thriftiness might
perhaps be admired from afar, but his personality combined
stinginesswith cruelty: he liked to drive his point home by
beating recalcitrant subjectswith his own cane.
His one passion-and the one place he did not stint on
money-was his army. If we want to find a tradition of Prussian
militarism, here is its beginning. He removed the plants and
statuesfrom the Lustgarten and turned it into a military parade
ground. Hitler, too, later had the Lustgarten paved for mass
rallies, and Ulbricht, as we have seen, had the palace razed to
accommodatehis even bigger demonstrations.Though Friedrich
Wilhelm greatly expanded his army, however, he avoided risking
it in battle. His son and heir, a young man of very different
temperament, longed to preside over a court filled with music
and philosophy.But when the tyrannical father died in 1?40 and
Friedrich II inherited the large arrny as well as a full treasury,
he decided instead to conquer Silesia.At one point his wars
brought Prussiato the brink of destruction, but ultimate success
brought him the appellation "Frederick the Great" and assured
Prussia'sreputation as a military power.
Berlin, it is worth remembering, came of age as a garrison
town. Though Friedrich Wilhelm I was not interested in beauti-
fying the city, he did seek to promote its growth. Needing more
spaceto quarter soldiersand more artisansto supply their needs,
he gave away hundreds of lots and compelled the recipients to
build houseson them. He expanded the city limits and, in the
1730s,replaced the Great Elector's old fortifications with a new
wall built around the expanded city (see fig. 1a). This rvas not
a fortification but a customs barrier to regulate commerce and
 Ol d B erl i n
lld Be rlin

17
Gate
Brandenburg
and PariserPlatz,
1898.Courtesyot
Landes bildst e l l e .

in both
prcvent soldiers fionr clescrting.(For ail the differences, all that remains of the eighteenth-century rvall, apart lrorn a
to Ulbricht's later wall') fragment erxcavatedin Stresemannstrasse.'fhe original baroclue
thesc purposctswe can seea resemblance
at the
Arnong the rvall's eiglrteen gates, the most prominent lay gate that separatedUnter den Linden frclm the Tiergarten rvas
southern anrl rvestern eclges of the expancled Friedrichstadt, replaced at the order of King Friedrich Wilhelm II, Frerlerick
rvhcre large plazasw'ere laid out inside the gates:a circular plaza the Great's sllccessor.The cornmission given to the architect
Gate'
inside the soutl'rernHalle Gate, an octagon at the Potsdam Carl Gotthard Langhansusheredin a ner.vera in Berlin architec-
of Llnter den Linden' ture. To the end of his long life (in 1786), Frederick the Great
antl a square at the western terminus
Friedriclr Wilheim envisioned all three sPacesas military paracle had insisted on building in ornate rococo forms that had long
grounds. since fallen fiom favor in Europe's more fashionablecapitals.
'l-lie last of these gates concludes our look at the eighteenth- Langhans'sllrandenburg Gate, completed in 1791, brought the
century city. It marks the outer end of thc grand axis of Unter to Berlin (flg. t7).
more severelines of neoclassicism
and
,1",', l-ir-,d.n, scene of royal processions,military parades' Langhans'ssimple design,modeled on the Propylaeaof Ath-
elegant promenaclesthroughout the eightcenth and nineteenth ens, comprises a double row of Doric columns that franre five
72 .",it.r.i"r. 1'hotrg6 it is not the original Bra'clenburg Gate'
it is openings.'l'he gate's other famousfeature is the copper quadriga
0l d B erlin -that rvas mountecl atop it in 1793. This work of the young
sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow Portrays a goddessriding in
a chariot drarvn by four horses galloping into the city. The
Brander-rburgGate, r.vith its quadriga,has long been Berlin's most
famous s)"rnbol,rivaled only by the more ephemeral Wall. Its
image has adorned commemorative coins, playing cards, histori-
cist and expressionistpaintings, Posters for all kinds of events,
and East and West llerlin postcards and tourist brochures. It
may be an admirable work of architecture and sculpture, but
d.rat does not explain its s).rynbolicresonarlce.Nor does its in-
tencleclfunction. Unlike many nineteenth-century structures, it
was not erected as a national monument. Its size and form made
it much more than a utilitarian structure, but it was nevertheless
a functional gate in the city wall, flanked by guardhouses.
History has made the BrandenburgGate a German monument.
At {irst its official name was the "Gate of Peace"; it rvas not,
afteS-all, a Roman triun-rphal arch. But its identity changed in
!-80!i rvhen Napoleon detbatedPrussiaand triumphantly entered
its capital through the rvestern gate. He shorved hjs admiration
for the quadriga by ordering tl-rat it be taken dorvn and shipped
to Paris to join his other confiscatedart treasllres.T-heemperor
thus became known locally as the "horse thief of Berlin," and
Prussianand German
_ the denuded gate became the symbol of
. rgsistance.In 1813 Schadow himself proposed to fill the" q-ua-
driga's place atop the gate with an enorrnous cast of the Iron
Cross,the nerv military medal designedby Schinkelat the !e.i"tt
o[ King Friedrich Wilhelm lll. Upon Napoleon's def'ea!rn lS)a,
hovr.ever,a triumphant processionreturnecl the quadrigato Ber-
lin, the neighboring square rvas renamed Parir.-Square{Pariser
Platz), and the "Gate of Peace" became a "Gate of Victory."
Schinkel designeclnew insignia for the godcless'sstaff, a-Fili-iafi
eagle and, rvithir-ra wreath, the Iron Cross.
fhereafter, the gate became ever more firmly establishedas a
symbol o[ Prussiaand its capital. It became the traditional back-
jrop far militaf parades
tfoilorving Napoleon'sexample) and for
the ceremonial reception of state guests. When the entire cus-
toms r,vall\\,as torn dorvn in the 1860s, the Brandenburg Gate
rcmained; trom then on, it rvas strictly a monument. After Ger-
many \lrasunifiecl under Prussianleadershipin 1871, the victori-
ous troops rettrrning liom France were welcomed at the Bran-
denbr,rrg Gate. 'fhe Prussian monument had become firmly
establishedas a German national symbol, the site of many more Ol d B erl i n
ceremoniesbefore soldiersmarched through it on their r.l'ayback
to France in t914. The Nazis, too, embraced the old symbol of
victory. The night Hitler rvas appointed chancellor,January 30,
1933, thousands of torch-bearing Nazi brownshirts marched i_
through the gate.
When the bombers came, the Nazis generallydid a better job
of evacr-rating
art treasuresthan saving people. But they appar-
ently did not dare risk morale by removing the goddessand her
horses.Instead, in 1942 they had plaster castsmade of the qua-
driga. l3y l9_45,-w_h5n
Sovietsolcliersplanted their red flag arop \
the gate, it was badly damagedand only fragmentsof the 9ua- \:,
driga remained. The East German leaders who inherited these
ruins decided to keep the gate and adopt it as their own. Tl-re
shatteredquadriga'sfate was less certain, Artists and politicians
entertained several proposals for a suitable new sculpture: a
group of workers, chiidren dancing arouncl a globe, a mother
with child, Picasso'sdove of peace.A Western ner.vspaper, hear-
ing of the last proposal in 1949, declared that if the dove of
peace were to nest placidly at the entrance to the Communist
world, the West rvould be obliged to raise a banner in front of
the gate with the words Dante had affixed to the gatesof Hell in
his /ryfi:rnor
"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."2l Ever.rtually,
however, the East decided to restore the quadrigainstead.
Unfortunately, the gate stood in the Soviet sector, the plaster
castswere in the West, and during the 1950sthe two regimes
were busy denouncing each other as criminals and usurpers.
After the failed uprising againstthe East German governmenton
June 17, ,1953,)the West renamed the street that conti4ued
U"t.i d"" Linden west 9f !h9 gate "the $tfgqt-g117Jun" " Brt
the two Berlins had only one BrandenburgGate, and it provided
a rare opportunity for cooperation. West Berlin agreed to re-
create the statues while the East restored the gate. This joint
venture di(l not, of course, proceed without incident. In 1958
the reconstructedquadrigawas brought to the sectoralboundary,
\
a few steps from the gate, and simply left there for the East
\
Germans to claim. Before putting it up, the Easternerssawetl
\
thaPrussial gagteo{ of goddess's staff and the Iron
the 1op th_e I
Crossout of the wreath. For the Western public. this was vandal- I
"frii I
i;- ;;;;ii, Eui"it shoulclnot really haue lree.ra surprise.In
1957 West Germany had legalizedthe display of the Iron Cross,
()ld Berlin rvliich the GDR had bannedas a militarist symbol. In 1958 the
0ld Berlin
Eastcrnprcss \\iasfilled rvith editorials an<llettcrs dernandingthe
rcmoval o1' thest: "f'ascist" ornaments. -l'he lJranrlenburg Gate
was once again to be a gate o[' peacc, declaretl the East l]erlin
gor,ernrncnt(fig. l8).'/4
With thc godrless'sstafTcrou'nerl only by a wreath, the qua-
rlriga and gatc r",ould renrain liom 1958 until 1990; or-rlythcir
surrountlings lvoukl change utterly. At first the gate still {iltered
trallic passingacrossthe sector line bctu'een the Tiergarten and
the shattereclruins along Llnter den Linclen. As the two halves
of tire city grov apart, the gate acquire<la rich new symbolic
rcsonance,captured,for example,in scenesof the 1961American
comedy film One, l-wo, '[hree, directed by l]illy Wilder (whose
ties to Berlin rver.rtbar:kto the 1920s)and starringJamesCagney
as a representativeof the Coca-C-olaCompany caught betwecn
the intrigues of Conrmunistsan<lex-Nazis.
lltrt the film was a comrnercial flop: by the time it rvas com-
pleterl, the Wall ha<lmade crossing the llrandenburg Gatc any-
thing but a laughing matter. llecause the rvestern edge of the l8
Mitte district coincided vr,ith the location of Friedrich Wiihelm Brandenburg
Gate,
I's wall, the sectoral boundary lbllorved the same course after 1959.Courtesy

1945,and alter 1961,so did a long stretch of the nerv r,,,all.'fhe
Bran<lenburgGate u'as thus once again part of a rvall. Here was
a historical continuity that no one \l.anted to acknowledge.This
timc it \\'as not a gatc; the crossing points lay elservhere.Erich
I lonecker, thc Politburo member in charge of national security
and hencethc man directingconstructionof tlre Wall, apparently
presscd {br tlic gate's closure because he thought any activity
arouncl it rvor.rldattract Western media attention, demonstra-
tions, antl provocations." I-i" r,r'asprobably right, but he may
also have lteen slvayed by his o\\rn regime's fiequent evocation
of the Napoleon-likespecter of West Gcrrnan troops marching
trir.rn-rphantlytlrrough the Brandenburg Gate on their way to
rlestroypt:aceand socialisrn.
lirth the gate and the quadriga had bet:n designedto lace into
the city-that is, to the east.l-hat is not what a visitor rvould
cxpect, but the gate'sintended audiencewas local rcsidents,not
outsi<lers.The lblk memory of Berlin seemsto olfcr evidenceof
confusion on this point. Visitors are often tolcl that the quadriga
originally facerl the other direction ancl u.as turnecl around at
some point-something that never happened. fhis is an old
of German
IntormationCenter.
legend: a' 1860 guidebook assertsthat tl.re godclesshad faced
away h-om tor.vnbelbre Napoleon, but had bee. reerectecllook-
ing i'rvarrl in 1814.26Late-trventieth-centuryversi.ns of the
kgend tend to be vaguerabout the date of'the re'ersal;ulbricht
as u'ell as Napoleon comes uncle' suspicionas a possibleculprit.
I' its uncertain stance torvard inside and outside, resirients
and visitors,the llrandenburgGate resernblednothing so much
as its newer neighbor,the Uerlin Wall. With the Wall's presence,
the poignancy of the gate as s1'rnbolbecamestronger tfian eyer.
o. its Easternsirle,PariserPlatzstarklyillustratedthe desolatio.
brought by the Wall. C)nceamong B.,.li,r'. most elegantsquares,
a place of Palaces, the Frencl"ra'd U.S. embassies, the Acatlemy
o[ Arts, anrl the city's premier hotel, the Acllon, it *as .row bare
cxcept for the gate and the wall. Tourists \r,ere restricted to its
far end, but distinguishedguestsand orlicially invitecl tlelegations
u,ere brought to the gate and asked to admire the u,ork-of the
border guards.From the westem sicle,the gate was norv entirely
()ld Berlin
t9
BrandenburgGate,
November1989.
Courtesyol German
lnlormationCenter.
inaccessible,and could only be seen from a dead-end street in
the middle of the Tiergarten. Nevertheless,tourist busesregularly
came by, and state visitors r,vere brought there too. In 1963,
when John F. Kennedy came to see it, he found that the East
had hung red banners between the columns to block any view
beyond the gate-a Cold War gesture with more figurative
meaning than the East had intended' In 1987, the gate served as
the backdrop for Ronald Reagan'sspeech,rvith bulletproof glass
erected behind the rostrum. (Bill Clinton, in 1994, was the first
U.S. President privileged to speak on Pariser Platz, under the
heads of the quadriga's horses instead of their posteriors.)
Both East and West Berliners claimed the gate as the symbol
of their city and of their version of Ger-rnanunity. But it may
have been the foreign media from the West that made the gate
0ld Berlin
the preeminent s),mbolof the less telegenicBerlin Wall. During
the days after November 9, 1989, the TV networks made the
BrandenburgGate the backdrop for their cameras.It r.vasa fortu_
nate coincidencethat the semicircular barrier blocking the gate
was the only section of the Wall wide and flat enough to stancl
(and dance) on (fig. l9). Since the Brandenburg Gate was not a
functioning gate, however, the hordes of East Germansactually
passedthrough the Wall elsewherefor severalweeks.Finally, on
December 22, 1989, West German chancelior Helmut Kohl led
a phalanxof politicians in a ceremonyreopeningthe Brandenburg
Gate. Evidence later surfaced that Kohl had in fact pressureJ
the East Gernans to delay the opening for five weeks so that he
could be present.2T
A few dayslater, New Year'srevelersclimbed up to the nevr4y
0l d Es rlin acccssiblcquadriga ancl left it seriouslydamaged.Soon aftcrward,
rvhile thc gate was being restored, the cluaclriga,too, lvas taken
dorvn lbr a careful restoration. Thereupon controversy crupted
anerv.l'he summer of 1991 sarv a reprise of the 1958 dcbate
about thc quadriga, this time rvithout the Cold War to define
positions.A yor.rngChristian Democratic member of the llundes-
tag, l'-rieclbertPfliiger, called {br the lron Cross and Prussian
eagle to be left off the restored quadriga. (They had been pre-
scrved since 1958 in an East Berlin museum; the reunification
of the quaclrigacoincidetl rvith that of Germany.) His campaign
found supporters across the political spectrum, only some of
rvhom could be dismissed as leftists antipathetic to any sign o[
German national pride. 'Ihe Berlin press and public was nonethe-
less hard on Pfliiger. He argued that symbols of Prussianpatrio-
tism ha<l no place in the neu' Gerunan/; but others suspected
that his real motive rvas bitterness over the decision to move
the governrnent liom llonn. He \\'as,more pointedly, accusedof
u'anting to falsify history ") la Ulbricht." Little attcntion was
paid to his clain-rthat l're wanted to restore the original "Gate
of Peace" and the original quadriga as it had existeclup to 1805.
It *,as easy for Pfliiger's supporters to conclude that Berlin was
rejecting historical authenticity in favor of patriotic nostalgia.
In {act, no one was proposing the retum of the gocldess's
original stal}, gone since 1814, when Schinkel had not merely
added the lron Cross and Prussianeagle but had redesignedthe
entire staft. The quadriga Napoleon took, for example, had a
Roman eagle w'here the Prussian one later perched. And that
hatl actually been the goddess'sthird staff: Schadow's first two
designshad proved so unpopular that he was obligatedto replace
eacl-rof them rvithin mouths.l8 In oth.-'r rvords, the debate in
199I was betrveenrestoring the 1814 quaclrigaand the 1958
version. Since the latter's repudiation o[ Prussianmilitarism had
been the work of Ulllricht's regime, it founil ferv defenders'
Amid gclod rvords for Prussiansymbols-the Iron Cross, it rvas
pointed out, came out of the rvars of liberation againstNapoleon,
not World War I or ll-llerlin's leaders ceremonially rededi-
cated the restoredquadriga,with the staff of 1814-1945 as well
as an artificial patina, on August 6, l9L)1, the two hundredth
anniversary of the gate.
T'he gate itself coul<l drus claim its traditional place as the
syrnbol of Berlin as r,vell as its nerver status as the preeminent
symbol ot' unity. Yet it stood in the middle of the city's main 0ld Berlin
east-\4,est
thoroughfare; the symbol of unity physicallyseparated
the two Berlins. The relationship betvveenthe gate and the all-
important circulation of traffic sparked another debate.'fhe at-
tachment many Gennans have to their cars has al*,ays stopped
short of the American practice of tearing down cities to make
u'ay for cars, but the passion of German car lovers seems to
arouse in Green-thinking Germans the same kind of suspicion
that passionatepatriotism does. Flappily the question of driving
through the Brandenburg Gate did not create clear battle lines.
Some car haters rvanteclto reservethe gate for pedestriansand
bicyclists,but others drought that the gate could serve to limit
and slow auto traffic. Car lovers' favorite solutionswere a tunnel
under the gate or a schemeto circumvent it. The latter, in fact,
had first been proposed at the turn of the century, and Nazi
planners as well had sought to remove the buildings on each
side of the gate to make way for traffic. In the i990s, those
buildings were long gone, but plans to clirect traffic away from
the gate were neverthelessopposed by some r,vho thought it
should serve as a gate, a symbol of German unity, not a traffic
island, ancl by others u,ho wanted to rebuild pariser platz as the
enclose<lspaceit once haclbeen.An initial cornpromisepermitted
only busesand taxis through the gate, and they r.r,ererestricted
to the wider central passage,once reser\/edfor the emperor's
carriage.
When dre monarchyended in 1918,that centralpassage was
not the only place that lost its identity. For all the turbulence
of Berlin's history under the Hohenzollerns,they arguably pre-
sided over a clegreeof stability that has not been approaclieclin
the rest of the twentieth century. Many Berlinersare understand-
ably reluctant to frame their identity in terms of the troublecl
erasthat followed: the weak Weimar Republic, the Third Reich,
and the tlivided city. Hence the wish to reach back to the rela-
tively placid era of monarchs. Horv can that nostalgiapossibly
be satisfied?Since hardly anyone actually wants a king, it is
difficult to know just what to salvagefrom the royal past. The
much-restored but never removed Brandenburg Gate, with its
thrice-removedand twice-reconstructedquadriga,is as authentic
a s).rnbolas Berlin can ofTer.Other buildir-rgs,visible or remem-
bered, embody too rich a variety of meaningsto permit any con-
sensrrsabout the legacyof old Berlin, or about how to restore it.

BecauseBerlin is the site ol the
physical encounter ol East and West, ol
two yalue systemsand ways of life, it
has the ,ichest and most va.ied texture
ol any town in the world. The
Reichstagis situatedon the limit of
that space and standsup in an open,
strangelymetaphysicalarea,r
-Christo, 1985
Bide back with bus number5. Standon
the bus's platform,facing the Wertheim
side ol LeipzigerStrasse.The picture
o[ unbelievablemovementol people,
lights,and vehicles that now plesenls
itself to the eye-that is Berlin!2
-recommendation for visiting
PotsdamerPlatz in a 1912travel guide
The cosmopolitanrabbits
Hop aroundon PotsdamerPlatz
looking at these pastureshow should I
Believe what my grandlathertold me
Here was the center of the world3
-Sarah Kirsch,
"Naturschuugebiet,"1982
A melting pot of everythingthat is
evil-prostitution, drinkinghouses,
cinemas,Marxism.Jows, strippers,
negroesdancing,alrd all the vile
otlshootsol so-called"modernart."a
-Berlin as describedby
the Nazi Party newspaper,
ViilkischerBeobachter.l92S
Metropolis
Berlin is a city of brick, stone, and concrete, but textiles ha'e
recently played a prominent role in its architecttrre.The years
1993 and 1!94 sarv the royal palace'sfacadere-createdout of
canvas;l995,lChristo's "u,rapping" of the Reichstag.Their very
transienceenabled the tw.o projects, different as they were, to
make bold statementsabout Berlin's urban spaceas a repository
o[ memory. The palacefacade(seechapter 2) calleclattention to
an invisible past; the wrapped Reichstagstirred buried mem.ries
about a visible,and visiblyravaged,building.If the vanishedroyal
palace is the most notable absenceamong Berlin buildingr, ih"
I{eichstagmay be the single most resonant presence.
This pair of buildings, a mile apart at opposite enclsof Llnter
den Linden, stand as symbolic centers of porver from trnrocras
and two kinds of government. The seconclera, the era of
rrarlia_
sarva vastly larger and more diversecity, one 1... l;,,s."p_
T:",.,
tible to dornination by any cer.rtralplace or institr-rtion.After the
rniddle of the nineteenth century, Berlin's expanse,appearance,
social structure, and sources of livelihood changed rapidly and
profoundly. And even things that dicln't change rooked
dif[rent:
thanks to moclerntechnology-trains, then automobilesanclair-
planes-natives and visitors alike crossedthe city via ne'r, routes
and at new rates of speed. In this new rvorld, no king could
command the sameallegianceas before, and no parliameritcould
project the same kind of unity as a traditional king-especially
when dre palacestill stood and (until rgrg) stiil houseclu.oyul
resident. what came to Berlin in the late nineteenth u.,.1
".rly
twentieth centuries rvith startling speed was the bewildering ,"t
Iotss 12. For example,NeLtes Deutschlan{ Nov.5 and Dec. l' 1951;and see 7. tbid., 194. Notes
:o Pagss 22-56 David Shears,The Ugly Irontier (London: Chatto and Windus, 1911), lI, 8. Ibid., 185. to Pages57-77

75-79; and Peter Wyden, Woll: The Inside

Story (New York:
of'Dn'ideJBer,l,in 9. Tliis discussionof the l-lohenzollernpalace and the Communist
Simon ancl Schuster,1989), 565-68. palaceis confusingenough in any language,but more so in Englishthan
ll. On the border guards, see Mues Deutschland, Nov. 30, 1985. Ex- in German. In German, the rvord for a royal palace (Schloss)
is entirely
cerpts from schoolbooksare reprinted in Jtirgen Petschull,Die Mouer, 2tJ' distinct fron'rthe name the EastGennansgaveto their parliamentbuilding:
ed. (l{amburg: Gruner und Jahr, 1989), 256-5"1,and Thomas Davey, ,4 Palastder Republik. Perhapsthis linguisticconfusionhamperedthe propo-
GenerotionDit'ided:GermanChildrenond the BerlinWal.l(Durham: Duke Uni- nents of rebuilding the royal palacein their attempt to gain foreign sup-
versityPress,1987),l7-18. port. Appended to a brochure they issuedin 1992 (Fiirdervereinfiir die
l'1. Mues Deutschland,Sept. 10, 1963, and Aug. 13, 1966; Tagesspiegel, Ausstelltrng,Die Bedeutung Jfu dieMitte Berlins-Eine
desBerlinerStadtschlosses
Sept. ll, 1990. Official versions of their deaths are disputed by Peter Dokumentation IBerlin: Fcirderverein,1992]) arenumerouslettersof support
Bo4is,"Grenzsoldatender DDR Mordopfer westlicher Banden?"Deutsch- solicited from pronrinent German scholarsand cultural figures.Also in-
lanclArchiv22 (1989\:925-31. cludeil are three letters in Erglish, all frorn prominent architects.Two of
15. Ileiner Stachelhaus, JosephBetys,trans. David Britt (Nerv York: these-from Frank Gehry and Michael Wilford (partner of the late James
Abb eville,1 991) ,l3l. Stirling)-oppose rebuildingthe old palace.In the third, the Americanarchi-
15. Dietfried Miiller-Hegemann, Dr'eBerlinerl[auerkronkheit(Herford: tect l{obert Venturi comesolrt finnly againsttearing dow,nthe royal palace!
Nicolai, 1913),6. 10. JoachinrFest,"Pliidoyerfiir den Wiederaufbaudes Stadtschlosses,"
17. lbid., 121-28. in l)as neueBerlin,ed. Michael Monninger (Frankfurt: Insel, 1991), 118.
18. In Lutz Rathenorvand l{arald Hauswald,Ostberlin: Die andereSeite II. Heinrich Moldenschardt,"Marx' und Engels'Sch.loss-Freiheit," in
der Stodtin Textenund Bildern(Munich: Piper, 1987), l-54. Akademie der Ktinste, Zur historischen I'litte Berlins,25.
19. Peter Schneider,The GermanComedy:Scenes oJ Lfe aJterthe Wall, 12. Peter Findeisen,"Anmerkungen, auch zum 'I'hema Neubau des
trans. Pl-rilip Boehm and Leigh l-lafrey (New York: Farrar, Straus and BerlirrerSclrlosses." Krirische
Berrchte)) (1994):56.
Giro ux, l99 l) , 13. 13. FrankJurterRundschau, April 10, 1993.
20. Jochim Stoltenberg,"Eine neue Zukunft," BerlinertrIorgenporr,
June 14. Friedrich Dieckmann,"Staatsrdumeim Innern Berlins:Ein Streif-
1 4, 19 90 . zttg," Architektur 1992 (Hamburg:Junius, 1992), 32.
in Berlin:JahrbLtch
(Darmstadt:Luchterhand,1982),
21. Peter Schneider,DerLlauerspringer 1 5 . D e r S p i e g enl ,o.5 1 , D e c. 1 4 ,1 9 9 2 ,2 0 6 .
102 . 15. Wolf Jobst Siedler,"Das Schlosslag nicht in Berlin," in Fcjrderver-
August 13, 1991.
22. BerlinerMorgenpost, ein Berfiner Stadtschloss,I)as Scfiloss? Eine Ausstellung iiber die llitte Berlins
23. Sylvia Conradt and Kirsten Heckmann-Janz,Reichstriimmerstadr: (Berlin:Ernst und Sohn, 1993),20.
Lebenin Beiin 1945-196,1(Darmstadt: Luchterhantl, 1987), 206-1. 17. FrankJurter Allgemeine Zeitung,March 19, 199t.
l B . F e s t ," P l i i d o ye r ,"1 1 0 - 1 1 .
Two: Old Berlin 19. Riidiger Schaper,in Siiddeutsche Zeitung,Dec. 15, 1992.
l. l-etter reprinted in Hans Herzfeld, "Berlin als Kaiserstadt und 20. Klaus Landowsky,quoted in Tageszeitung, lan. 29,1992.
Reiclrslrar.rptstadt," in
in Friedrich-Meinecke-lnstitut,DasHauptstadtproblem 21. 7-ageszeitun6, Jan. 28, 1992.
dei Geschichte(Tiibingen: Niemeyer, 1952), 168. 22. Wolf Jobst Siedler,"Das Schlosslag nicht in llerlin-Berlin r,r'ar
quoted in Akademie der Kiinste, Zur
l. Alfred Diiblin, Schicksalsreise, das Sctrloss," in Fcirderverein,Die Bedeutungdes BerlineLSradrscfi.losses,
1l;
historischenMitte Berlins(Berlin: Akademie der Kiinste, 1992). Fest,"Plddoyer',"ll5; Boddien,quoted in A3000,no.3 (1993):14.
3. Friedrich Fiirlinger, "City Planning in Divided Berlin," in Berlin: 23. Michael S. Cullen and Uwe Kieling, DasBrandenburger'[or: Geschichre
Pn,otof GermanDestiny,ed. Charles B. Robson (Chapel Hill: University of deutschen
eines Slmbols (Berlin: Argon, 1990), 108.
North Carolina Press,1960), 189. 24. Jiirgen Reiche, "Symbolgehaltund Bedeutungsrvandel eines poli-
4. See,for example,Giinter Stahn,DasNikoloiviertel (Berlin: Verlag fiir tischen Monuments," in DasBrnndenbttrger
Tor: Einellonographie,
ed. Will-
Ba uwe se n,l991) , 52. muth Arer.rhovel and Rolf Bothe (Berlin: Arenhovel, 1991),304.
5. Quoted in Bodo Rollka and Klaus-Dieter Wille, Das Berliner 25. Peter Mcibius and Helmut Trotnow, "Das Mauer-Komplott," Die
(Berlin: Haude und Spener, 1987), 95.
Sradrsciioss Zeir (overseas
ed.),Aug. 16,1991.
6. Reprinted in Gerd-H. Zuchold, "Der Abriss des Berliner Schlosses," imJahre/860 (reprint, Braunsch-
25. FriedrichMorin, BerlinundPotsdam
248 lrcfiiv 18 (1985): 192.
Deutschland weig: Archiv-Verlag,1980), 16. 249
Notas 27. FnnkfunerAllgemeine Zeitung,April 18, 1991. Republic Sourcebook, Kaes,Marrin Jay, anclEdward L)imendberg Notes
to Pages7$-1t7 28. Lllrike Krenzlin, "Eisernes Kreuz und l'reussen-Adler:Ja oder (Berkeley:University "d ll,:i
of California press, 1994),425.
Ncin?" in llauptstadtBerlin-w,ohin mit der llitte? ed. Helmut Engel and to Pages117-t38
25. Gay, "The Berlin-Jewish Spirit,,,170.
Wollgang Ribbe (Berlin: Akademie, 1993), 104-7. 25. llar-ryKessler,Tagebiicher tglg_tgj7 (Frankfurt:Insel,l95l), l0B.
27 Karl Scheffler,Berrin-ein stadcchicksar (reprint, Berlin: Fannei.nd
Three:Metropolis Wa l z , l 9 B 9 ) , 2 1 9 .
l. l)orninicpreLaporte,Chrisro (New York: Pantheon,1986),83. 28. wilhelm llausenstcin,"Berriner Eindriicke," in
Hter schreibtBerrir,
). Berlin.ftir Kenner:Ein Biirenfiihrerbei -l-agmtd Nacht durcrldie deutsche ed. Ilerbert Giinther (Berlin: InternationaleBibliothek,
1929), 39l.
RerchshdLptstddt (Berlin: Boll und Pickardt, 1912),quoted in Jiirgen Schutte 29. Quoted in Alan Balfour, Berlin: The polittcs of Order, 1737_tggg
and Peter Sprengel,ecls.,Die Berliner lloderne 1885-1914(Stuttgart:Re- (New York: Rizzoli, 1990), il4. columbus Har,rsshourd
not be (but orte'
clam, 1987),97. is) confusedwith the SS,snotorior:sColurrrbiahaus concentratloncaml).a
3. Sarah Kirsch, Erdrcich(Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt,1982), different building.
4 8. 30. Karl Scheffler's..rpo'nr. in /ossjsche Zeitung,Aug. 29, 1920, re_
4. Quoted in Michael Simmons, Berlin:The l)ispossessed
Ciry (London: printed in GliinzenderAsphalr',Berhn im Feuilleton der lVeimorerBepriblA.ecl.
Flan.rish
Flarnilton,1988),74. Christian Jdger and Erhar.d,Schiitz (Berlin: Fannei und
Walz, 1994).
5. Quoted in Michael S. Cuilen, Der Reichstag:Die Geschichte
einestllonu- I 1 9 *2 0
nrents(Berlin: Irr,ijlichund Kaufmann,198]), 33. ;
6. Ibid., 18. Four: Nazi Berlin
7 . Qrrot et lin ihit l. , ll. 1. Adolf tliier, fuletn,(ampl(Newyork: Reynaland t,litchcock,
B. rb id. ,407. 1939),
153-64.
9. lVochenpost, June 14, 1995. 2. Quoted in Hilmar Hoffinann,,44ythosO)ympia
(Berlin:Aufbau, lggl),
10. Christo, 1977,quoted in Christo-Projekte in der Stadt1961-1981
(Cologne:Musenm Ludw'ig,198l), 95.
H Baynes,ed., IAe Speeches oJAdolfItitter, Aprit | 92 2-August
11. Quoted in Cullen, Der Reichstag, T. . ^ .1 )"r:*
i 9J9 (London: Oxlord University press, 1942), 593_94.
12. Bundestagdebate reprinted in Michael S. Cullen and Wolfgang 4. Werner Jochrnann, ed., Adolf Ilitler, ,llonologeim Filhrerhauptquortier
Volz-,ccls.,Christo-Jeanne-Claude:Der Rdchstag"DemDetttschen /o,lAe"(Ber- l94l-1941: Die AuJ2eichnungen lleinrjch Heims(Hamburg: Knaus, l9g0),
gisch Gladbach:Liibbe, 1995),241. 101.
1 3. Ib ir l. , 249.
5. Julius Karl von EngelbrechtenanclFlans yolz, Wir w,ancle^
14 . ll)id. , 255. clurcltdas
,otionalsozia]istische
Berlin: Ein Fiihrer durchtrie GedenhstiitLen
15. Berliner des Kompfesunt
Zeitung,June 24-25, 1995. tlie Reichshauptsrodr(Mr.rnich:Eher, 1937).
16. Brandt, 1977, quoted in Christo-Projektein der Sradr,95.
6. Adolf l-litler, speechof August 2, 1938,reprinted in Angela
17. Bnndestagdebate, in Cullen and Volz, Christo-Jeanne-Claude, 227. . Schtin_
berger,Die NeueReichskanzlei von AlbertSpee.(Berlin: Mann, lggl), 177.
18. l;ranhfurrer AllgemcineZcinng. Feb. 26, 1994. 7. Albert Speer,lnsidetheThirdBeir:fi,trans.Richard ancl
19. (loerd Peschken, ClaraWinston
"The Berlin'Miethaus'an<lRenovation,"in Berlin: ( N e w Y o r k : A v o n , l 9 T1 ) , 1 5 1 .
,4nArchitectural Prolile,ed. Doug Clelland(London: AD Publications,1983), .l-opo1,a_
8. On Kernd'l's viervs:Alfred Kernd'l ZeLtgnisse derhistorischen
51.
,
phieatf demGekinde derehemarigen Reichskanzrei
Berlin-ilitte(Berlin: Archio-
20. Berlin ond lts F.nt'irons:Handbook .for Trovellers,5th ed. (Leipzig: logisclresLandesamr,1993);'tageszeitung, Z, l992,and
l J a e d c c k er , l9 2 l) ,5 0 . luly April 13, 1995;
BerlinerZeitung,July 27, 1992; DerSpiegel,rto. 16, April
21. l)eter Gay, Weimar Culture: -[he Outsideros lnskler (Neiv York: Harper'
17,1994, 56_60;
and personalconversation,
June 28, 1995.
a n t l R o w , l9 6 8 ) .
9. Hitler, speechof August 2, 1938,reprinted in Schcinberger
22. Christopher Ishenvood, prelace Io The Berltn Srories(Nerv York: , Die Neue
Reichskanzlei, lJ8.
N r ' u l ) i l e ctio n s, 1 9 5 4 .1 ,x.
10. Flitler,speechofJanuary9,1939, reprintedin ibid.,
21. l)eter Gay, "'the Berlin-Jervish Spirit," in I:rettd,Jets, ond Other
l85.
11. Quoterl in Hans J. Reichhardt and Wollgang Scheche,
G e r m a n s( N e r ,v Yo r k: Oxfo r d Un ive r sity Pr e s s, 1978), 171.
Von Berlitr
nach Germania:Uber die Zer*i)ntng der Reichshoultstadt
durch Albert Speers
24. Harold Nicolson, "The Charm of Berlin," reprinted in The lVeimat
Neugestaltungsplanungen (Berlin: I_andesarchiv, l9g4), 17.