Democracy in Berlin - Reichstag building, Berlin, Germany

Architectural Review, The, July, 1999 by Peter Davey

The reworked Reichstag in Berlin is a triumph of imagination and skill, raising issues as varied as the nature of cities and the representation of democracy, relationships between modernity and history, sustainability and scale.

For decades the Reichstag building sat there, dark and gloomy against the Wall(1): a hulk of stone, isolated far from the glittering shops and comfortable apartments of West Berlin by park and the huge wilting expanse of the Konigsplatz.(2) Inside, repairs had allowed Parliament(3) to sit but it rarely did.(4) It was hard to believe that such an isolated, ruined and ponderous place could ever possibly be a real focus of democratic political and national life again. Its shattered neo-Renaissance shell seemed to be an irrelevant epitome of the heavy, aggressive burgeoning of the newly unified German state in the late nineteenth century.

Yet, for all its stolidity, Paul Wallot's 1894 building(5) was for a while a symbol of a sort of liberty. Kaiser Wilhelm II hated it because it represented democracy (the haut bourgeois brand, but at least democracy), and he is reputed to have gone there only twice.(6) The inscription on the great pediment 'Dem Deutschen Volke' (To the German People) was, in a way, a criticism of imperial power.(7)

Destruction of the interior by fire in 1933 allowed the Nazis (who are supposed to have initiated the arson, though blamed it on the poor loony Dutch anarchist van der Lubbe) to close the whole place down - and with it democracy.(8) In 1945, the Russians regarded the capture of the building as the climactic moment of the whole titanic struggle, and the image of the heroic soldier planting the Red Flag on top of Wallot's shattered dome became one of the most potent icons of victory.

After the division of Germany following the War, the place was occasionally used by the West German government to establish that the island of West Berlin was still part of their area of influence, and the shell was given a jury-rig (a clumsy '60s interior to make it possible as a debating chamber and offices). It remained isolated, irrelevant and sinister. It was savagely cut from its matrix, the old centre of the city, because the division between Russian and Western sectors ran along the line of the eighteenth-century customs wall, and the Reichstag was just outside the boundary (the Kaiser was making a point). Its neighbour, Langhans' 1791 Brandenburg Gate, was on the other side.

All changed when Germany was reunited and the Wall came down. The Reichstag was suddenly in the middle of the city (instead of being on the edge of a political island). And it was to become, again, the focus of democratic debate after parliament decided (by a small majority) to move the capital of the reunited country from Bonn to Berlin.

Clearly, once that decision had been made, the Bundestag(9) had to move into the old Reichstag building,(10) and an international competition was held to see how to make the much tormented place into a symbol of modern democracy. Norman Foster won with a proposal to put a huge canopy over the whole building, generously extending its presence into the Platz der Republik(11) with a slender portico somewhat similar to Foster's Nimes mediatheque which was in design at roughly the same time.(12)

But a new masterplan for the area, the Spreebogen, by Axel Schultes,(13) necessitated a complete re-brief, and the design was radically changed. The old shell was to define the perimeter. As much as possible of Wallot's building was to be preserved. But, in place of his dome (which was purely decorative(14) and had no relation to the interior), Foster proposed a completely new and unprecedented device: a huge transparent hemisphere round the inside of which are interlocking helical ramps that can bring the citizens high up above the politicians to gaze out over the panorama of Berlin, and down into the chamber in which their elected representatives debate. It is a symbolic and practical manifestation of the people over their politicians, and a wonderfully dramatic gesture, for as you rise into the great luminous volume, gradually the whole of Berlin is revealed, while below (if you try hard) you can see the politicians at work, trying to rule the capital and the whole country that spreads out to the horizon in every direction.

To get up there, you have to go through the formal entry route. Wallot's great west steps are now used by politicians, officials and public alike, a proper relationship of electors, elected and their servants in a modern democracy.(15) You come into an awesomely huge toplit, tall thin narthex (mostly by Wallot, but with dramatic Foster sky luminance). Immediately in front is a glass wall which defines the grand entrance lobby, and beyond that is a further transparent partition which allows you to see straight into the chamber itself, where the President of the Bundestag sits under the great eagle, the symbol of the state from unification, through all the intervening regimes, until this version was symbolically moved from Bonn to Berlin, the new capital.(16)