The Reichstag is the home of Germany’s Parliament, and it
has also proved to be a highly symbolic site – for various reasons - throughout
its existence.
It was originally built – construction began in 1884 and was
completed in 1894 – to symbolize German reunification after the Franco-Prussian
War and the declaration of the German Empire that began in 1871.
The design, in a neo-Renaissance style, was by Paul Wallot
and was intended to capture the spirit of German optimism. The building was
funded by reparation payments made by the defeated French Republic.
In 1916, at the height of World War I, the words “Dem
Deutschen Volke” (meaning “to the German people”) were added to the façade and
are still in place today. At the end of the war in 1918, German defeat led to
the formation of the Weimar Republic, the declaration of which was made by
Philip Scheidemann at the Reichstag.
The symbolic importance of the building became apparent in
February 1933 when the main hall of the Reichstag was destroyed by fire. Many
explanations have been offered down the years as to how the fire started, but
at the time the blame was placed on a young Dutch Communist named Marinus van
der Lubbe, who was later executed for the crime.
Adolf Hitler had become Chancellor of Germany only four
weeks before the fire, and the Nazis used the event as potent ammunition in
their fight against the Communists.
The Reichstag had not been rebuilt by the time that World
War II broke out in 1939, and further damage was caused during the war by air
raids and the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Soviet troops that captured the city
made a beeline for the Reichstag and flew the hammer and sickle flag from the top
of the building to symbolize German defeat.
Between 1957 and 1972 much of the damaged stonework,
including the dome, was removed. The building had no official function at this
time, given that Germany was again divided, with the Parliament of West Germany
located in Bonn.
When the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 it passed close to
the Reichstag, but on the eastern side. It could therefore form a highly
symbolic backdrop for demonstrations and events, such as rock concerts, held on
the western side that could be heard on the other side of the Wall, much to the
annoyance of the East German authorities.
Following the reunification of Germany in 1990,
reconstruction of the Reichstag began in 1995 and was completed in 1999. The
result was a modern meeting hall built within the original shell, and with a
highly original design for the dome that was the work of the British Architect
Sir Norman Foster. This takes the form of a glass structure that visitors can
walk around on the inside, looking down into the main hall and out across
Berlin.
The Reichstag is an iconic building that has packed a huge
amount of history into its relatively short existence.
© John Welford
Tiergarten is the largest park in Berlin, occupying an area
of 495 acres (200 hectares) at the heart of the city.
It was originally a forest used as the hunting reserve of
the Electors of Prussia, but during the 1830s it was transformed into a
landscaped park by Peter Joseph Lenné. Towards the end of the 19th
century a Triumphal Avenue, lined with statues of German statesmen and rulers,
was laid out at the eastern end, but this was destroyed during World War II.
Postwar reconstruction included a great deal of replanting
and the erection of many statues and memorials to famous Germans.
The park contains many delightful vistas, especially over
the many lakes and ponds it contains, and it is a popular place for Berliners
to walk, jog or cycle.
At the centre of Tiergarten is Grosser Stern (Great Star)
which is a large five-way roundabout with a triumphal column (Siegessäule)
in the middle. This column, which has a viewing platform at the top, was built
to commemorate victory in the Prusso-Danish War of 1864. After further military
successes, against Austria in 1866 and France in 1871, the figure of
“Goldelse”, representing Victory, was added at the top.
It was moved to its present position in 1938 and can now be
seen if one looks straight through the Brandenburg Gate down the Strasse des 17
Juni.
© John Welford
Five elderly ladies live on Museum Island. Or, to be more
accurate, they don’t actually live in the generally accepted meaning of that
word, because they are the spirits who hover over five iconic buildings and who
invite anyone who passes by to visit their homes.
The ladies may not be real, but the buildings they haunt
most certainly are. Museum Island is a real place, being in the heart of Berlin
and surrounded by the narrow waterways of the River Spree and the Spree Canal.
This is where you will find Berlin’s four oldest museums and its original art
gallery, plus the magnificent cathedral known as the Berliner Dom. There are no
other buildings at the northern end of the Island.
The ladies issue their invitations with a few conditions.
One is that you pay a few euros for the privilege and that you leave your
backpack in the cloakroom before you start looking around. However, a free
audioguide – in your own language if not too obscure - is offered and is well
worth accepting.
The most senior of the ladies is the spirit of the Altes
Museum. This was opened in 1830 in a magnificent neo-classical building that
was originally built to house the Prussian monarch’s collection of paintings
and antiquities. It now stages permanent exhibitions of the art and culture of
Ancient Greece downstairs and Etruscan and Roman art upstairs.
Next in line is the lady who looks after the Neues Museum,
whose home first opened in 1855 as a means of relieving pressure on the Altes
Museum, the collections of which were growing too fast for the available space.
Bomb damage during World War Two meant that it had to undergo considerable
rebuilding and it did not reopen until 2009, but it now houses a major
collection of Egyptian art with the world-famous bust of Queen Nefertiti as its
star exhibit.
Another major collection at the Neues Museum features the
Stone Age and other prehistoric eras.
The third old lady presides over the Alte Nationalgalerie,
which opened in 1876. The building is a copy of a Greek temple, reached by a
double staircase. This lady has a name, which is Germania, the patroness of
German art, and her image forms part of the tympanum above the entrance to the
gallery.
The national art collection has now vastly exceeded the
capacity of the Alte Nationalgalarie and it is now also housed in five other
buildings around Berlin. The original building displays works by German masters
such as Caspar David Friedrich, but there are also paintings by French
Impressionists and even a few pieces by John Constable, although these are not
easy to find.
The Bode Museum is the preserve of the fourth lady, her home
having been opened in 1904. This museum had to be built to fit the space
available at the top end of the island, which is a rough triangle cut off from
the rest by a railway line that runs across the island.
The museum is named after Wilhelm von Bode, who was Director
of the Berlin state museums at the time the museum opened, but before 1956 it
was known as the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. The collection is somewhat mixed,
including sculptures, Byzantine art, and an outstanding coin collection that
includes items from ancient Athens and Rome.
The new kid on the block, as far as our old ladies is
concerned, is the patroness of what is arguably the most remarkable museum of
the lot. The Pergamon Museum, which opened in 1930, is unlike anything one is
likely to see anywhere else in the world, and it owes its existence to the
activities of German archaeologists who worked in the Middle East during the late
19th and early 20th centuries and sometimes acted in ways
that many people today would question. That said, the results of their efforts
are well worth seeing.
The Pergamon Museum is currently undergoing a major
redevelopment, which means that the main reason for its naming is not available
to view. This is the Pergamon Altar, which was discovered in the ancient city
of Pergamon in western Turkey and reconstructed in Berlin at around the turn of
the 20th century. The Pergamon Museum was built specifically to
display the Altar and associated friezes and other objects from the site.
The Museum was expanded to allow for the display of other
huge monuments, and these are what can be seen at present in the South Wing of
the Museum while the other parts remain closed.
You can therefore walk down the Processional Way of the city
of Babylon and then, like King Nebuchadnezzar, walk through the Ishtar Gate.
Both of these are adorned with thousands of brick-shaped glazed blue tiles that
are decorated with images of real and mythical animals. These were discovered
in fragments and shipped to Berlin in more than 500 huge crates, to be
re-assembled according to documentary evidence from the time of Nebuchadnezzar.
When you go through the Ashtar Gate you find that you have
also walked through the Market Gate from the ancient Greek colonial city of
Miletus. This is a massive two-storey structure that stands nearly 95 feet
across and 55 feet high. It dates from the 2nd century AD and stood
as a link between two public areas in the town until it was felled by an
earthquake in the 10th century.
The reconstruction in Berlin contains around 60% of the
original marble blocks, despite further damage having been caused during World
War Two.
The Miletus Hall also contains a superb mosaic floor from a
house in Miletus, a round tomb from north of Rome, and a partial reconstruction
of a porticoed hall from Pergamon, this being one of the few items currently on
display in the Pergamon Museum that actually came from that city.
Go upstairs and you will find exhibits relating to Islamic
Art. These include the remarkable Aleppo Room, consisting of painted wall
panels from around 1600 that once adorned a merchant’s house in the Syrian city
of Aleppo. It is probably just as well that the panels are now in Berlin,
seeing that the building, which had survived for hundreds of years, fell victim
to bombing in the recent conflict in that region.
The five old ladies are doing a grand job in looking after a
huge quantity and variety of treasures in Berlin. Long may they continue so to
do.
© John Welford
