Abenteuer Berliner Schloss

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, no construction project in Germany was more controversial than the reconstruction of the Berlin Palace. The reason for this was not only its prominent location in the center of Berlin, where the Palace of the Republic, a testament to the GDR, had taken the place of the palace since 1976. Rather, the reconstruction also seemed extremely anachronistic to large parts of the reunified German society. It was not until the brilliant staging of the simulated façade that sympathy for the project increased and even hard-boiled left-wingers of the ’68 generation were convinced of its benefits for Berlin’s urban space. Some loudly suspected that the Hohenzollerns were to be reactivated here, perhaps even as regents and monarchs! Then the costs of the reconstruction were brought into play and a rigid cost cap was placed on the largest cultural project of the united Germany, without any relation being established to other new public buildings – whether it was the Chancellor’s Office and its extension or the new construction of the Berlin-Brandenburg airport BER, not to mention concert halls or museums. Only when Alexander von Humboldt was found and chosen as the patron saint of the Berlin Palace’s name and use did the excitement calm down, only to finally end in an equally heated debate about the postcolonialism that accompanies the use of the building after its completion.
Would this debate have occurred even without the building? Is it already a gain of the house that the non-European collections now face a reflection of their actions and their origins? Wilhelm von Boddien is careful not to answer such questions. They belong in the hands of the official institutions that run the house. He, as the initiator of the reconstruction of the Berlin Palace, was and is concerned with the jewel of Berlin’s center, with one of the most important baroque buildings in Europe. In his memoirs, he gives a lively account of the motives and hopes, and above all of the resistance and conflicts he encountered in his advocacy of the Berlin Palace, the obstacles that were put in his way, but also the help he received from people of all backgrounds and positions. While cities and societies all over Europe were reassuring themselves of their historical heritage, the Germans were grumbling, criticizing their precious holdings and resisting the recovery of architectural beauty. With humor and sometimes sarcasm, with irony and sometimes acerbity, with alert anecdotes and an almost encyclopedic memory, Wilhelm von Boddien describes from his personal perspective the commitment and dedication, the immense effort and surprising response that accompanied his 30 years of advocacy for Germany’s largest cultural project after the fall of the Berlin Wall. An indispensable document for all those who take an interest in the Berlin Palace.