Palast der Republik by Peter Suchin

It’s lucky that this postcard summarising the multiple virtues of Berlin’s Palast der Republik actually reached its intended destination, since the ink carrying the address ran in the rain on the day it was delivered. The card was sent to me by my friend Louise, being received on Thursday, 18 th July, 2019. By this date the architectural experiment the postcard colourfully records had long gone, the building’s demolition having begun in 2003 after years of fierce debate over the virtues or otherwise of this much- loved site, designed as a “people’s palace” by Heinze Graffunder and opened in1976. The complex initially functioned as both the parliamentary headquarters of the German Democratic Republic and a multipurpose cultural centre, containing two auditoriums, a theatre, restaurants, a post office, a bowling alley and a disco. Following the unification of Germany in 1990 the Palast’s political role disappeared, and once it was discovered that some 5,000 tons of asbestos had been used in its construction, its fate, as they say, was sealed.

verso of postcard

The picture side of the postcard is divided into six distinct segments, one presenting its subject’s name, with others showing a selection of the myriad activities it encouraged and contained. Five of these segments are numbered, with brief descriptions being supplied on the other side of the card: 1. “Palast der Republik”, 2. “Konzert im Hauptfoyer”, 3. “Spreebowling”, 4. “Mitarbeiter des PdR auf der Treppe zum Hauptfoyer”, 5. “Spreerestaurant”.

The largest compartment is number 1, an exterior shot in which the Palast’s famous mirrored- bronze windows are clearly visible, though the Berlin Television Tower, the tallest building in Germany and one often seen on photographs of the Palast, is relegated to an imaginary space just beyond the photo’s left-hand edge. Given its position on Berlin’s “Museum Island”, adjacent to the war-damaged remains of the Berlin Palace, the planned reconstruction of the 600-year-old centre of German imperialism also mitigated toward the Palast’s demise, since the latter occupied the exact site of the former Baroque structure, preventing its accurate realisation. Protestors keen to save the Palast from demolition pointed out that it had as much right to be preserved as an important relic of Germany’s convoluted history as did the Berlin Palace, but this argument unfortunately failed to win the day.

Dresden’s Kulturpalast, echoing the Palast’s socialist intentions and general design, continues to operate today. The Palast was reminiscent, too, of several other well-known cultural centres such as Paris’ Beaubourg, or the late-Modernist South Bank Centre on the River Thames, or, even the expansive arrangement of towers, colonnades, terraces and lakes known as “Barbican”, also in London. The Palast der Republik’s open, adaptable spaces and its intrinsic assertion of a plethora of pleasures – sociability, dining, dancing, acting and sport – suggests a tiny utopia, a model set in motion by the good citizens of the former East Berlin.

The Palast catered to many tastes: Tangerine Dream performed there in 1980, and Einsturzende Neubauten in 2006.

It was within the walls of the Berlin Palace that the famous “Amber Room” was first installed in the early years of the eighteenth century, before being given, by Frederick William l in 1716, to Peter the Great. The tautologically-titled Museum Island seems to draw toward itself a number of peculiar “lost spaces” which, in time, return in modified form. The Amber Room was stolen by the Nazis when they invaded Russia during World War Two, a full-scale copy of this work being initiated in 1979 and taking twenty-four years to complete. Perhaps the Palast der Republik will itself undergo a studied act of historical restitution at some unspecified future date.

Peter Suchin