1. Why do Westerners long for the past?
Western nostalgia
To gain approval for their decision the Berliner Schloss foundation created a “3D Visualisierung des Berliner Schlosses” (3D Visualization of the Berlin Palace) that incorporates the modern elements of the design by the architect Franco Stella to replace its pre-Baroque elements.
Watch the slideshow “Die Geschichte des Stadtschlosses von Berlin” (The History of the Berlin City Palace) and determine whether you can sympathize with the feeling, and also with the role, the palace has for many contemporary Germans. What does the reconstruction of a palace firmly associated with Prussian power achieve for the image of modern Germany?
Construction challenges for the Forum
2. How do Germans, who grew up in the East, react to unification?
“ostalgia” Nostalgia for communism
In a nostalgic video, entitled “Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR – Palast der Republik – In Memoriam”, former East Berliners compiled a number of touching scenes to document the Palace’s history. Watch the video to get a sense for what the Palace meant to the people of East Berlin and East Germany.
Those responses provide a sense of the continuing association East Berliners have with their palace, and the history it represents, despite their reservations of being dominated by a monolithic ideology. One commentator writes that the palace was an “amazing building, und now it’s gone”, and another one posts that he still loves his “beautiful East Germany”. Here is the text of the accompanying song:
The simple peace, by Gisela Steinecker
When grass grows near a house,
and smoke rises from the chimney,
people will sit together
and eat bread while they rest.
This is the simple peace
that I consider essential,
Simple peace for thousands of years
Is hard to achieve.
Describe first what the song and the film try to achieve. Can you relate to this expression patriotism? Are the reactions honest? How do they compare to your feeling of patriotism?
3. Is “Ostalgia” justified?
In a New York Times article, Moritz Holfelder, a German journalist, states that the Palast der Republik gave “East Germans an identity, in a positive sense,” and “eighty percent of the people from the former GDR loved the building.” Mr. Holfelder said further, that after reunification “GDR history wasn’t worked through in the way the Nazi past was in West Germany,” and he thinks that if the “Palace’s fate were to be decided today, it would be unlikely that the building would be demolished in favor of the new Schloss,” which he described as a “squalid box” and added, “at some point, maybe we will tear down the Schloss again, and rebuild the Palast der Republik.” (“Symbol of a Brutal Regime? Or a Fun Place to Party?” June 7, 2019).
Read the article and consider his claims. What is your view on the decision to replace the Palast der Republik with the reconstructed Schloss? How do you regard reconstructing architecture loaded with political meaning?
4. Reasons for Destroying Communist Architecture
What does Berlin’s architecture reveal about Communist ideology in Berlin? Explain the fervor of destroying the Prussian palace in 1950, after WWII had just ended, by summarizing the arguments offered in the article “War Damage 1945 and Demolition 1950” on the website of the Association Berliner Schloss e.V. Does the information provided clarify the reasons for the destruction of the Prussian palace? Discuss why the article could be called partisan. List some elements in the presentation that reveal this bias.
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