Palast

Here’s what the Palast der Republik looks like this summer. It’s see-through. Berlin has been dismantling it, asbestos fiber by asbestos fiber, at great taxpayer expense.

Here’s what it used to look like:

     posted 8 August 2008 by Michael Scott Moore

  1. So…is the commentary that you would rather not have taxpayers paying to get rid of asbestos? :0

    e

    — e    Aug 9, 08:27 am    #

  2. I can’t speak for Mike, but I’d rather not have taxpayers paying to dismantle a viable building (already de-asbestified, if I’m not mistaken, after it was pointed out that it had as much asbestos as the ICC in the west) that was a symbol of at least some good things to the people who lived around it, and especially not to pay for the re-erection of a building that only has meaning to the far right, monarchists, and so on.

    — Ed Ward    Aug 9, 12:56 pm    #

  3. I think it’s true that some West Berlin buildings from the same era had no less asbestos. Hence the sarcasm. (And I think the asbestos was taken out, but along with carpets and walls?) The Palast was an ugly duckling, but Ed’s right; it was usable. The new-old “Hohenzollern” palace going up in its place is bound to be sentimental kitsch.

    — Mike    Aug 9, 02:35 pm    #

  4. Well, not actually; thanks to the German passion for documentation, it’s going to be authentic as can be, given that it’s not, um, authentically the Schloss. They have all the architectural papers they need to rebuild it to spec, after all.

    But the Palast was not only useable, it was being used as an arts venue with some excellent contemporary (and local) stuff going on inbetween money-spinners like the maybe-fake terra-cotta soldiers from Xian. Had there been a consensus that the building would have remained, it would have been renovated at far less expense than demolishing it and rebuilding the Schloss and perhaps when, to give just one example, Elke Moltrecht had to vacate Podewil with her avant-garde concert and festival series and so on, the Palast might have been able to house her activities and give Berlin an actual venue for the cutting-edge art that is so much an attraction in the media, even if it doesn’t actually exist all that much on the ground these days.

    Berliners’ selective memories and editing of the city’s history to give a monolithic view of what this place is and was don’t do Berlin any favors.

    — Ed Ward    Aug 10, 01:29 pm    #

  5. I’m sure it’ll be as authentic as possible, but won’t the Hohenzollern palace also have a mall? That’s kitsch.

    — Mike    Aug 10, 06:32 pm    #

  6. Actually, that’s changed. Current plan is to bring the Asian collection from the Ethnological Museum in Dahlem up to the Schloss and install it there along with some research institutes, etc. Or last I heard. I think that even the CDU considered the mall idea crass.

    — Ed Ward    Aug 11, 01:00 pm    #