This is undoubtedly Berlin's most changing area. The Reichstag (Parliament) used to stand out in bleak isolation. It is now one of many government buildings along the Spree River. The Wall had made the Potsdamer Platz equally desolate; it is now almost a town in its own right, a new Manhattan of skyscrapers, cinemas and ethnically diverse cafés. Many governments are ensuring their Tiergarten embassies become true architectural advertisements. Zoo Station used to be where East meets West; the Lehrter Bahnhof is now being converted from a backwater to a new central station for the whole city. North will meet south here too. Tiergarten means "animal garden" and the second half of the name is still very appropriate. No amount of pressure from developers has reduced the wide area of lakes, woods and paths that is such a soothing antidote in the town centre. You can even pick mushrooms here. Two reminders of military history, the Siegesäule (German Victory Column) from 1871 and the Sowjetisches Ehrenmal (Soviet War Memorial) from 1945, are also here. SightsReichstag (Parliament) Ebertstr. Daily 0800-2400. Free, last admission 2200. S-Bahn Unter den Linden. One of the happiest results of reunification must be the return of the German Parliament to this building. Its destruction by fire in February 1933 provided the new Nazi regime with an instant excuse for dissolving it, so for the next 70 years, it lacked a role. Its use to house the exhibition "Questions on German History" was hardly worthy, and the occasional meeting of the West German Bundestag here was unnecessarily provocative to the East Germans just a few metres away across the border. Inside, the building bears no relation to the various interiors it has had since opening in 1894. This opening had followed 22 years of argument on the size, layout and location of the building which Germany clearly needed after its unification in 1871, although the Kaiser was never keen on such a strong commitment to democracy so close to his palace. The inscription across the front – “Dem Deutschen Volk” – (to the German people) was only added in 1916. The exterior has been restored to much as it was, but Norman Foster's new glass dome adds a very late 20th-century look to it, quite apart from the solar heating which it incorporates. Some Russian graffiti from May 1945 has been left. A lift provides quick access to the dome, once in the building, but queues can be very long in the summer during the day. Early morning and evening are good times for avoiding the queues and some visitors have been known to use the separate restaurant entrance at busy times to jump the queue. However access is obtained, the view makes it well worthwhile. Look down on the government area still being built, across to the rising Lehrter Bahnhof which will be Berlin's central station, and up to the skyscrapers that dominate the new Potsdamer Platz. The surrounding government buildings are called Das Band des Bundes (The Ribbon of Government). They are all new and have been deliberately constructed across the Spree River to signify the unity across what had been the border between West and East. These buildings literally show open government. Only the toilets offer glass-free privacy. Otherwise it is possible to look into every office and every meeting hall. Siegesäule (Victory Column) Strasse des 17. Juni. Mon-Thu 0930-1830, Fri-Sun 0930-1930. E1.20. S-Bahn Bellevue. Try to reach the column through the pedestrian tunnels. Leaping in front of the speeding cars is not recommended. In considering all the defeats Germany suffered in the 20th century, it is easy to forget the victories of the 19th. Three in fact occurred within 10 years of each other, against Denmark, Austria and France. This column from 1873 commemorates them. The statues on the north side of the roundabout commemorate the three people most responsible for these victories: Count von Bismarck, who would become Chancellor in 1871, and the two generals von Moltke and von Roon. Von Moltke defeated the French in the brief but savage 1870-71 war after which Germany seized Alsace and Lorraine as victory spoils. Von Roon was Chief of Staff and then Minister of Defence during these successful military campaigns. In 1938, the Nazis moved the column from in front of the Reichstag to its current location. It is possible to climb the 285 steps to the top and join the Goddess of Victory in looking down, in a sense to the city, but in fact over acres of green as the monument is situated in the middle of the Tiergarten. One Nazi legacy can also be seen – now the Strasse des 17. Juni which stretches from the Brandenburg Gate to Ernst Reuter Platz, but widened before the war to be the East–West axis of a future "Germania". Photographers should take advantage in winter of the late opening for night-time traffic shots on the roads through the Tiergarten. Hamburger Bahnhof-Museum für Gegenwart (Hamburg Station-Museum for the Present) Invalidenstr. 50. Tue-Fri 1100-1800, Sat and Sun 1000-1800. E6. S-Bahn Lehrter Bahnhof. Trains stopped running here in the 19th century but the basic station layout has remained. In 1904 rebuilding started on a transport museum which was its role until 1939. The division of the city found it right on the border on the Western side, but owned by the East as it was still nominally a station in the hands of the Reichsbahn (German State Railroad Company). The building was therefore abandoned until the late 1980s when it was bought from the East Germans and converted into an exhibition centre. Once the Wall came down, its role could broaden, and much of its collection is on permanent display. Some "works of art" are clearly here because no other gallery dares touch them. Seemingly haphazard blocks of stone, wood or metal sheeting would still cause much offence elsewhere. Andy Warhol is the main foreign artist displayed and Joseph Beuys the main German one. One piece called Directional Forces uses 100 school blackboards, another called The End of the 20th Century uses 21 basalt stelae. Potsdamer Platz U-Bahn and S-Bahn Potsdamer Platz. This complex is almost a town in its own right. Passing through the glass tower blocks which surround it, one does not expect a hint of Italy, but that is what has been created in the centre, at ground level at least. The Renaissance sense of design, the arcades, the ochre tiles and the pastel façades provide a leisurely respite to contrast with the frantic pace of life in the towering Sony Center and the Debis Haus, where any new and successful German company likes to be housed. It would be easy to spend a whole holiday around the platz; there is ample greenery and water during the good weather and ample culture for the greyer days. Casinos and night clubs are also as prominent here as in their traditional locations near to Zoo Station. Before the war the Nazis began to pull down some buildings to prepare for a new north–south axis. Between 1945 and 1961 it was a centre for several political dramas whilst the border stayed open; the most violent day was 17 June 1953 when Westerners had to watch strikes being crushed by Russian tanks. After 1961, on the Western side there were no capitalist grounds for building so close to the border, cut off from potential customers and employees. On the Eastern side the area was in the "death strip" so all buildings had to be cleared. Only an empty space was needed for border patrols in the watchtowers to look down on. From the West, tourists came to gawp across the Wall, but the local population was by and large too sad to do so. Suddenly in 1990 the area became instantly desirable. By 2000 everything above ground was complete. (Underground was a very different matter. Financial cutbacks from 2001 have stalled the completion of both a north–south railway and road link.) Its international air has been assured by the range of architects involved in the planning – Renzo Piano from Italy, Richard Rogers from London, the German Hans Kollhoff and the German-American Helmut Jahn. By naming the main square after Marlene Dietrich, a singer was chosen who was liked just as much abroad as in Germany. Appropriately the Filmmuseum Berlin is here (Tuesday-Wednesday, Friday-Sunday 1000-1800, Thursday 1000-2000) and nothing is concealed. The Nazi era is covered as extensively as the 1920s, before moving on to the bitter East/West divide after the war. Leni Riefenstahl celebrated her 100th birthday in 2002 and has a whole room devoted to her highly controversial career as a film director. History is also not completely forgotten in the Sony Center. It houses the Kaisersaal (Emperor's Room) from the former Grand Hotel Esplanade which was on this site. This small section of the building actually survived both the war and the Wall, although retaining its former glamour was out of the question. Erotik Museum (Erotic Museum) Joachimstalerstr. 4. Daily 0900-2400. E5 Admission only to those of 18 or over. U-Bahn and S-Bahn Zoo. There are plenty of perfectly innocent silk paintings here from China and Japan, together with miniature statues from Africa. There are drawings by the very respectable Heinrich Zille and there is also a room devoted to the very open studies carried out by the homosexual scientist Magnus Hirschfeld until he had to flee to Nice in 1933, when his library provided the basis for the Burning of the Books in Opera Square. There are also numerous other objects, unsurprisingly, of not such an innocent nature. Sowjetisches Ehrenmal (Soviet War Memorial) Tiergarten. S-Bahn Unter den Linden. This was the first new building completed by the Russians in 1945 and was inaugurated on their national day, 7 November. It is a sort of prelude to the much larger memorial that would follow in Treptow several kilometres to the east. This one specifically commemorates the 20,000 Russian soldiers who died in the Berlin area of whom around 2,500 are buried on this site. The marble used was taken from Hitler's chancellery building and the tanks that are beside the column were those that first reached the nearby Reichstag. Being just inside West Berlin, shifts of Russian soldiers used to be brought for a regular changing of the guard. They are now less committed to it, but the German Government has agreed to maintain the site, which largely amounts to keeping demonstrators away. Bauhaus-Archiv (Bauhaus Collection) Klingelhöferstr. 14, http://www. bauhaus-archiv.de 1000-1700 except Tue, E7.80. U-Bahn Nollendorfplatz. The Bauhaus was the best-known school of art and design during the 1920s. It had a turbulent history from its founding in 1919 in Weimar, through to its move to Dessau, and then to its final year in Berlin before it was closed by the Nazis in 1933. Few of its major participants got on with each other and they did not attempt to keep the school going in exile in the USA. Its slogan was "Art and Technology, a new unity" and it aimed to show that good taste and mass production were not incompatible. It would, however, retain a continuing worldwide influence which encouraged the West Berlin authorities to commemorate its work with this building. The founder of this building was the architect Walter Gropius (1883-1969) and he provided the initial conception for housing the collection but it was only completed in 1979, 10 years after his death. What is shown changes regularly, but there is always a selection of designs for actual buildings and for the many that stayed on the drawing board. It is often forgotten that the Bauhaus, like Jugendstil 30 years earlier, influenced interiors just as much as exteriors so this exhibition also covers furniture, pottery and metalwork.
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