Plan Designing a New Stage for German Power by Michael z. Wise

FOR NEARLY A HALF CENTURY, the Federal If Bonn's buildings were intended After 1949, sleepy Bonn was ness center sponsored by a con­ Republic ofGermany studiously avoided creating grand to exude a sense of atonement - accorded the legal status of sortium of U.S.-based investors. government buildings. The self-consciously modest, modern an architectural hair shirt for a Germany's temporary capital, Although West Berlin had lost West German capital that arose in Bonn after the demise contrite nation - the German nothing more than a way station much of its economic base dur­ ofNazi Berlin stood in pointed contrast to the overblown government is adopting a some­ pending the country's unification. ing the Cold War, the commercial classicism favored by the Third Reich - an architectural what different tone for the offi­ Once the Berlin Wall collapsed, projects manifest hope that busi­ cial structures it has commis­ representatives of the Federal ness activity would surge again in declaration of "Never Again." sioned for Berlin. The restored Republic were called upon to the revived city. capital's architecture and layout make good their historic pledge are consonant with unified to uproot themselves and move Amid the construction commo­ Federal ministries in the small Germany's status as the mightiest 380 miles eastwards back to tion at these and dozens of other Rhineland town set up opera­ nation in Europe and in keeping Germany's traditional seat of private-sector projects that tions in unassuming quarters. with the expansive urban scale of government. Despite decades of turned the city into Europe's The federal parliament, the the country's historic power cen­ lip service to doing just that, largest building site, the unified Bundestag, moved into an aus­ tre. many members of the Bundestag German state grappled with its tere new building and govern­ were reluctant to pack up and own architectural reconception. ment chiefs from Ludwig Erhard But in planning the government's leave the cozy town that had Not surprisingly, one of the to Gerhard Schroder occupied a move to Berlin from Bonn , suited their purposes so well. thorniest official design squat, low-slung official resi­ German leaders had an acute challenges was dence nicknamed "the sense of architecture's symbolic These reservations found expres­ Chancellor's Bungalow." potency and therefore feared an sion in the narrow margin of the international furor about their parliament's 1991 vote for relo­ aspirations if they revived an cating to Berlin . Already by 1991, overly monumental official style. the ideological triumph of capi­ A long string of state-sponsored talism over East bloc communism design competitions has resulted was taking its most prominent in a mixed bag of architectural built form in Berlin, with plans compromises. The designs, and for new corporate office the often bitter debate sur­ complexes for Daimler- rounding their creation, Benz and Sony on the serves as a valuable lens reborn Potsdamer Platz. through which to con­ The site of the former sider Germany's future East-West border cross- direction and its rela­ ing, Checkpoint tionship to the past. Charlie, was trans- formed into a busi-

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Project New Gennan Parliament, Reichstag. Long section (section of Si r Nonnan .-- Foster's design for Reichstag renovation). Credi/: Sir Norman Faster and Partners, /.JJndon. I Plan

Schultes and Frank were obvious had to perform the equivalent of Schultes originally wanted the their history and should proudly choices to design the a high-wire balancing act. They Federal Strip to be of a uniform regard themselves as a "normal" Chancellery, since it forms a key needed distinctive imagery that height, but Kohl pushed the nation. His comments make one part of the master plan that the could serve as an instantly recog­ architects to double the size of wonder whether the symbol­ same architects also created for nizable backdrop when foreign his office so that it would not be laden new Chancellery might Berlin's latest government dis­ statesmen come calling and offi­ outflanked by the nearby have looked different had the trict. The Schultes-Frank­ cial pronouncements are made. Reich stag. younger Social Democrat been designed district, now under con­ The design also had to surpass premier when the building was struction in an area known as the the functional but nondescript The main facade of the planned. But by the time he took Spreebogen, comprises a massive Chancellery in Bonn . Completed Chancellery, scheduled for com­ office, the project was already ribbon of official structures remi­ in 1976, that building looks little pletion by autumn 2000, looks well into the construction phase. niscent of the Mall in different from a corporate office onto a large ceremonial court The carefully calibrated design Washington D.C. Called the for BMW or Siemens. where Germany's leaders will now being realized befits a the headquarters of the German Band des Bundes, or Federal greet state visitors. Embellishing national capital that Schroder Chancellor, the first to govern Strip, it is as wide as a football At the same time, Schroder's pre­ this entryway will be a collection touts as being "self-confident from Berlin since Adolf Hitler. field, with the Chancellery and its decessor, Helmut Kohl, who had of concrete columns up to forty­ without being arrogant." For it Drawn up by the Berlin architects gardens at the western end and himself hoped to occupy the new six feet high. But the prospect of will have neither an aura of Axel Schultes and Charlotte offices and a library for the Chancellery, was wary of any another imposing colonnaded undue pomp nor false modesty, Frank , the new Chancellery's Bundestag at the other. The architecture that verged on the Chancellery in Berlin set off alarm while still offering a far more dra­ design marks a clean break with plan 's east-west orientation has forbidding or aloof. Schultes, too, bells in Kohl's office, so to avoid matic setting than Bonn's muted Bonn's anonymous, low-key symbolic import because the new took pains to avoid resuscitating anything that might have stage for German history's next approach. "This is no longer government district is rising upon the pretentious corridors of Speerian echoes, the architects act. understatement," Schultes said the very same Berlin tract where power like those Charlie Chaplin devised irregularly shaped and after winning the commission in Hitler's architect, Albert Speer, lampooned in "The Great asymmetrically placed columns Another new Berlin state building 1995. Now that Germany had envisioned a vast north-south Dictator." The design thus went that look more like rippling pan­ raising symbolic issues is the become a nation of 82 million axis, framed at opposite ends by through a half-dozen reworkings els than traditional pillars. The office for the president's adminis­ people, he declared: "We are a gargantuan victory arch and an during which Schultes said he result adds depth and a play of trative staff located adjacent to moving forward and we have to even bigger domed hall large and Frank "felt our pulse and light and shadow to the facade, Schloss Bellevue. The work of respond. The Republic must enough to accommodate that of the country." while also providing fresh Martin Gruber and Helmut show its colors." 180,000 people. iconography for a liberal democ­ Kleine-Kraneburg of Frankfurt, it Schultes and Frank fashioned a ratic state. involves an elliptical structure of The Federal Strip thus seeks to nine-story cube to house the polished granite. Enthusiasts cancel out Speer's design while executive offices, cabinet meet­ Since easily have called it jewel-like, a cabo­ forging a new architectural alle­ ing rooms, an auditorium for defeating Kohl chon nestled in the leafy green of gory - a ribbon of federal news conferences and a circular in 1998, the Berlin park known as the offices that also acts to international conference room Gerhard Tiergarten . But others, including knit together the once suitable for summits of the Schroder has former President Roman Herzog, divided city while European Union and the G-7, the argued that were right to fear that the project running across an group comprising the world's the Germans would resemble a shadowy coli­ area previously leading industrial nations. are too "up seum, a fortress or a massive sar­ traversed by the Flanking the cube will be two tight" about cophagus. Berlin Wall. For lower administrative\ wings for Germany's the Chancellery's 500-member new staff. The five-story wings, their Chancellery, mass leavened by thirteen glass­ Schultes enclosed gardens, form the outer and Frank edges of the Federal Strip.

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The structure is a "black house." for their own use. Russia's cur­ But no German building has Diplomats and political scientists It's an elegant form but certainly rent head of state, acting presi­ more symbolic potency than the will doubtless focus on a wealth the sort of architecture that dent Vladimir Putin, occupies the Reichstag, the former imperial of other factors in determining would never have been proposed tsarist-built Kremlin where Lenin, parliament. When the Reichstag whither unified Germany, but the for unassuming Bonn. Despite Stalin and other communists also dome was completed a century planning of the new Berlin modifications to the original reigned. Sir Edwin Lutyens's ago, Kaiser Wilhelm II con­ remains a compelling gauge of design, the building has a palace for the British viceroy in demned it as "the height of the uncertain state of the nation. detached and enigmatic air. New Delhi has become home to tastelessness." The emperor saw The capital's official face, which During the planning stage, independent India's democracy, the glass and steel cupola as a formerly proclaimed the might President Herzog told the archi­ and Mexico's president governs symbolic challenge to his auto­ and merit of Prussia, Bismarck's tects that their four-story design from the sixteenth century cratic power, since it loomed empire, the Third Reich and the made an "unfriendly impression" Spanish palace erected by slightly higher than the dome of dictatorship of the proletariat, is and ordered the narrow windows Hernan Cortes. Will time and the imperial palace. Today, a new now becoming a vibrant archi­ enlarged for more "trans­ new occupants ever erase the Reichstag dome has arisen , and tectural patchwork. It includes parency." The young duo grudg­ stigma associated with Berlin's the crowning element atop the the renovation and reoccupation ingly complied, nearly doubling buildings? latest home of Germany's of structures dating from all of the size of the windows, and national legislature is drawing these eras, as well as the addition eventually agreed to the presi­ The Federal Republic's Finance critical scrutiny. of bold symbolic gestures like dential request that they clad the Ministry, whose rigid criteria for Foster's rebuilt Reichstag and ellipse, not in black granite, but currency unification reverberated Designed by the British architect Schultes's Chancellery. It unites in a slightly lighter stone to around Western Europe, will Sir Norman Foster, the glazed approachable new and forbid­ soften its image. Now that the soon move into the same struc­ structure is part of his effort to ding old architecture, buildings building is complete and occu­ ture from which the Luftwaffe bring new symbolic meaning to that embody the zeniths and pied by the staff of the incum­ once terrorized the continent - the history-soaked Reichstag. nadirs of modern German his­ bent president, Johannes Rau, Hermann Goering's Aviation The choice of Foster was in itself tory. the changes have compromised Ministry. And in symbolic terms, a symbolic gesture. By enlisting the original form but done little what could be more awkward the aid of a star architect from Remarkably, these costly con­ to alleviate its symbolic pitfalls. than reunified Germany's Foreign abroad, Germany sidestepped struction projects will be juxta­ Ministry setting up shop in the charges of nationalist triumphal­ posed not with freshly cast mon­ The decision to house the bulk of former Reichsbank. Its design ism in the refurbishment of its uments to Germany's heroes, but the institutions moving from was personally selected by Hitler most prominent piece of political with a memorial at the restored Bonn to Berlin, not in new build­ and later served as the East architecture. capital's very heart to the victims ings like the presidential office German communist party head­ of its worst crimes - a Holocaust and Chancellery, but in older quarters. Forced by conservative parlia­ memorial. After years of debate, structures, is a welcome one mentarians to place a new dome parliament has given the go­ even if it poses difficult symbolic An aversion to occupying these atop the Reichstag against his ahead for the construction of a hurdles. Several ministers will relics in the 1990s evoked calls to will, Foster filled his with a pair of monument covering a five-acre soon be performing their daily bulldoze them and build the spiral viewing ramps. Ironically, site just south of the duties from within doubly-bur­ reunified capital from scratch. To the dome Foster never wanted Brandenburg Gate. The design dened buildings, long identified have agreed to do so would have has become the most exhilarat­ chosen is the work of New York­

Chancellor's bungalow in Bonn , with both Nazi and communist represented an ill-advised ing new feature on the city's sky­ based Peter Eisenman, calling for completed in 1969. repression. Elsewhere in the attempt to sweep history under line. Open to visitors even when a field of thousands of concrete Credi/: Bu111iesbildstel/e, Bonn world, other governments have the carpet. Berlin's architecture the Bundestag is in session, the slabs, arrayed like a vast burial adapted buildings of fallen rulers itself is not to blame for the terri­ dome aims to place the voters ground - or a bed of nails for the ble crimes once organized from above the politicians answerable German national conscience. It the German capital. The stones to them. Inside, Foster has pre­ would be hard to imagine any themselves are not guilty. served graffiti messages scrawled other nation devoting such a Punishing these buildings for on the walls by the Red Army prime spot in the center of its what happened there would be soldiers who helped conquer capital to a similarly sobering, like tearing down Canterbury Nazism. This step is noteworthy labyrinthine form. Cathedral for the murder of considering that it involves show­ Thomas a Becket. On the casing evidence of national other hand, political archi­ defeat and humiliation. It repre­ tecture cannot be entirely sents Foster's response to the separated from the context vexing issue of commemoration in which it arose. It is instilled vs. forgetting that has been at with meaning related to its his­ the heart of Germany's capital tory, happy or not. The integra­ dilemma. tion of the burdensome legacy into the framework of a democ­ ratic capital, and the manner in which its history will be conveyed to future generations, poses an important test of German politi­ cal character. Plan

Design for the Federal Chancellery by Axel Schultes and Charloue Frank. Credit: Axel Sc/mites and Cbarlolle Frank

Supporters of the Eisenman When Hans Schwippert designed Acknowledgments design hope that the monument the austere new Bundestag in Michael Z. Wise is the author will send an important signal Bonn nearly half a century ago, of Capital Dilemma: Germany's Plan Canada would like to thank about the place of memory in the he was firm in his refusal to ele­ Search for a New Architecture of the Canadian Centre for the new Berlin, a city whose latest vate the stature of German pub­ Democracy, published by Princeton Study of Capitals and the architecture is on the whole less lic servants through a grand offi­ Architectural Press. He travelled National Capital Commission for exuberant, experimental and cial architecture. That, he throughout Germany to research the their help with this article. expansive than the reunified cap­ insisted, could come only "when book, and interviewed dozens of ital of which some had dreamed, politics again attains exalted lev­ officials and architects from both and which others had dreaded. els." Exalted may not be an East and West Germany, including By fitting the government struc­ entirely apt description of the many who worked with the now tures into the city's existing fabric German polity in the late 1990s, defunct communist regime. He has and empty terrain, instead of but Germany has made an exem­ worked as a foreign correspondent, building entirely anew after eras­ plary transition to democracy. reporting on Central Europe for ing the architectural layers of With this record in tow, the Reuters and The Washington Post, previous political systems, Federal Republic trades its mod­ and is now a New York-based writer. Germany is showing a degree of est Bonn base for a far more visi­ His work has appeared in many willingness to live with its ble civic arena where, for years publications including The New uncomfortable history. to come, the Germans are des­ Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, The tined to weigh national pride and Economist, Lingua Franca and The Those who desired a grander assertiveness against the compet­ New York Times. He can be reached capital than Bonn have also ing claim of responsibility for the at: [email protected] unmistakably shaped Berlin's past. recreation. There has been a shift from the restrained architectural ambitions of the Rhineland town. At the same time, each of these projects was born amid a strug­ gle to moderate gestures of national aggrandizement, and in a restricted budgetary climate resulting from the enormous expense of revamping the bank­ rupt former East German econ­ omy.

The Federal Strip designed by Axel Schultes and Charlotte Frank. Credit: Axel Schultes and Cba rlolle Frank