Those in favor of rebuilding the Hohenzollern Palace and tearing down the Palast der Republik had recourse to aesthetic, historical, and ideological arguments. The demolition of the Palast der Republik was easier to justify than the reconstruction of the old Schloβ. The GDR building was undoubtedly ugly, and it stood at a pivotal location at the eastern end of the Linden, Berlin’s most important avenue. Its presence there, argued one commentator, “blocks an urbane future for the socialist-usurped city center.” Moreover, an inspection revealed that it was stuffed with asbestos, which made it a health hazard as well as an eyesore. Tearing it down could also be seen as belated revenge for the demolition of the old palace in 1950. Since the construction of the Palast had been meant to symbolize the triumph of communism, its destruction would symbolize that system’s ultimate defeat in the Gold War. Finally, clearing away this relic of the GDR would eliminate a possible shrine for
This decision generated more opposition than the politicians had bargained for. Former citizens of the GDR, along with some sympathetic Wessis, mounted a petition campaign to save the Palast and flooded the newspapers with protests against the demolition plan. They insisted that the Palast had been less a repository of repression than “a site of popular amusement.” Ossis recalled with fondness the hours they had spent in its restaurants, cafés, and bowling alley. They remembered it as one of the few places in East Berlin where an ordinary citizen could find clean public toilets and functioning East-West telephones. Admittedly, they conceded, the Palast was a little off-putting aesthetically, but no more so than most of the buildings thrown up in West Berlin during the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, this faction contended, compared to West Berlin’s International Congress Center, which was built at the same time, the Palast was downright “humane and friendly.” As for the asbestos issue, this too was not just a Palast problem, since many western buildings were also filled with the stuff, and at any rate there were ways to get rid of it (and plenty of illegal Polish laborers to do the nasty work). The real “contamination,” these folks said, had to do with the Palast’s alleged pollution with GDR ideals, but it was precisely as a legacy of the former GDR, as a piece of municipal and national history, that the building should be retained. It was here, after all, that on August 23, 1990, the GDR had voted to join the Federal Republic. Berlin had precious few recent buildings of such singular historical importance, it was argued. To tear down this one would be to commit another of those offenses against history with which the city was all too familiar.
Even if the Palast der Republik were to be torn down as planned, rebuilding the old Hohenzollern Schloß in its place struck many observers as an outlandish, not to mention reactionary, idea. It would be much better, they argued, to put up a modern building on the site—a structure representative not of Berlin’s feudal past but of its role as a trendsetter in architectural design. The opposition to reconstruction was also fueled by concern over the message that this action might send about the new Germany and its capital. The worry was not that the outside world would get the idea that the Germans wanted to bring back their monarchy, but that such a gesture could be interpreted as a revival of the German nationalist spirit.
