Rebuilding Destroyed Cities
Berlin's Future?
The complexity of reimagining the German capital is exemplified by the controversy surrounding the rebuilding of the Hohenzollern Stadtschloss, a palace in the center of the city closely associated with the country's Prussian past. Hated by the communists and severely damaged during the war, the original building was torn down during the Soviet era. Constructed in its place was the Palace of the Republic, a bronze-and-steel triumph of boxy 1970s Soviet design. In 2003 the German government voted to tear down that building and replace it with an exact faux-Baroque copy of the Stadtschloss, a decision that has been regarded by some as a bulldozing of the past, a form of architectural forgetfulness that is frowned upon by many urban planners, historians and critics.