Berlin, Germany
Mission Title: Palast der Republik 2008
Mission By: Brando Posocco, Alice Covatta
Mission Finished on Date: 21-05-2008
SCRIPT
- Talk to Berliners and tourists near the rusting half
- demolished hulk of the Palast der Republik about the building and its history, especially the debate around the reuse of the building.
- Speak with older people from the east, what do they think about the debate around the building and its current state.
- Speak on the phone with Hamburg
- based businessman Wilhelm von Boddien about the resurrection of the Berlinerschloss
TRAVEL BAG
How does the debate of a national symbol reveal the character of power in a country?
The bronze façade of the Palast der Republik erected in 1976 used to be a shining symbol of the GDR (aka socialist East Germany). Depending on your level of sentimentality, the Palast der Republik was either the one redeeming space of life in the old GDR or a rusting relic of a Stalinist past that ought to be obliterated. Those who favored demolition want to rebuild the Berlinerschloss, the old castle that once housed the emperor of Germany and was bombed to smithereens in WWII and finally put out of its misery by the Communists.
Post-GDR and pre-demolition, the building housed art and culture for young Berliners, an important site for artistic gestures and alternative venues following the reunification. Still clinging to existence on prime real estate along the River Spree in central Berlin, the Palast der Republik is being slowly and completely demolished. A temporary park will replace the site until money can be raised to build the Humboldt Forum, a multi-funtional building which will house the Museum of Non-European Cultures, the Berlin Central and Regional Library and the Humboldt University Scientific Collection. In an act of total regression, the façade of this new complex will literally reproduce the façade of the old Prussian imperial palace, the Berliner Stadtschloss, demolished in 1950.
Many from the East see the demolition merely as the final step to diminish and obliterate, however troubled, a half century of their history. Berliners have been torn about what should be done, protest and debate embroiled all sides, until the rather conservative conclusion played out. They still don’t have money to rebuild the Berlinerschloss/Humboldt Forum.
