Posted on 07/20/2003 5:30:02 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
An "ugly, rusty eyesore" or a "testimony to our past?"
A derelict building in central Berlin that once housed East Germany's communist rubber-stamp parliament is dividing east and west Germans more than a decade after unification.
Torsten Fliegel remembers disco nights at the Palace of the Republic, which was also a major entertainment and cultural complex, when he grew up under communism.
One of the first visitors to the building that has been closed for the last 13 years, the 44-year-old stares into a wide empty hall, which used to be lit by hundreds of lamps.
Only large rusty steel pillars remain of the walls, from which the portraits of communist leaders once looked on visitors.
The concrete and copper-colored glass building was closed for more than a decade because of asbestos contamination.
"This is where I learned how to dance," the electrician says, his voice slightly echoing in the 600-foot-long building.
"It was a great place to meet people. It was hard to get in, but when I managed, every few months, it was a real treat. That kind of place doesn't exist any more these days."
The huge graffiti-sprayed shell, which takes up the space of about two soccer fields in the historic center of Berlin and once housed a concert hall, cafes and restaurants, will soon disappear.
In a controversial decision, parliament agreed last year to knock down the building to make way for the reconstruction of a Prussian palace.
Emotions are running high over the future of the communist colossus, exacerbating lingering resentment between east and west Germans. Economic differences still prevail between the two sides, angering many who grew up in the East.
Unemployment at 19 percent in the East is more than double that in the West, and eastern wages are lower.
Many Easterners feel overrun by western culture, and look back nostalgically at some aspects of their Communist past.
ARCHITECT'S DREAM?
"It is really sad. Why should you tear down one part of history, only to recreate something that is even older?" Fliegel says. "It is distressing because they will knock something down that we were all working for in the GDR (German Democratic Republic)," he said.
Communist leader Erich Honecker built the Palace of the Republic in 1976 on the foundations of the old Prussian "Schloss," which was the residence of the last Kaiser, Wilhelm II, until he was exiled after World War One.
The palace suffered heavy damage from bombing in World War II and was blown up in 1950 after East Germany's first communist ruler, Walter Ulbricht, had declared it "a decadent symbol of Prussia's militaristic past."
The showy "People's Palace" became a major attraction for international visitors to communist East Berlin.
After the Berlin Wall came down in late 1989, the palace hosted East Germany's last parliament which voted in the following year to unite with the west.
Since then the derelict building, which is located in a prime tourist spot next to Berlin's Cathedral, has become an eyesore to many.
"East Germans feel attached to it, but I don't have any understanding for that," says Wolfgang Rauscher, a 68-year-old West Berliner, who was visiting the palace for the first time. "I was born in 1935, and I don't feel nostalgic for Nazi buildings.
"It's nothing but rotten pomp. It just doesn't fit here," he says, standing below a giant metal wreath on the palace walls, from which the hammer and compass symbol of the East German state has been removed.
Manfred Prasser is from the same generation as Rauscher, but he grew up on the other side of the Wall. The 71-year-old was one of the architects who built the palace, and he still feels proud of his work --- the huge concert hall.
"It wasn't Honecker who created this palace. It was built by people who are still proud of it," he says. "I wasn't thinking about party congresses when designing the hall. I wanted it to have a democratic form like a Roman theater."
Once labeled "Erich's lamp shop" because of its hundreds of lights, only dim sunlight today reaches through the dirty windows of the palace, revealing bare elevated floors from which visitors once applauded international performers.
WAVING GOODBYE TO THE PAST
Until the rebuilding of the Schloss in 2007, the communist-era palace could regain some of its old glory as a group of young Germans plans to stage concerts, operas and performances inside its shell.
The group of mainly West Germans says about 1.2 million euros ($1.35 million) are needed to prepare the palace for the performances, compared to 670 million euros needed to recreate the Schloss.
Stefan Rethfeld of the Zwischen Palast Nutzung (temporary palace use) group. is optimistic events can start next year.
"We are in favor of the Palace's demolition. We want to wave goodbye to the GDR. But in dignity," he says.
As for the differential in German employment rates East and West: one of the worst economic decisions (although probably politically impossible NOT to do) was wage equalization between the two Germanys when there was no equality of skills. It doomed the East to receive no major investment, for what entrepreneur in his/her right mind would invest in a factory where the wages were among the highest in Europe, but the skill levels were sub-par? All that this did was push investment further east to Poland and Hungary, whose wages have been rising with their skill level.
Bottom line, you can have as much unemployment as you are willing to pay for.
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