Holding History and Hope Up to the Light

Few buildings come with more historical baggage. As the Reichstag officially became the seat of German government Monday for the first time since 1933, its looming form still evokes images of violence. Opened in 1894 as the home of the German parliament by Kaiser Wilhelm II, destroyed in a suspicious fire that led to the triumph of Nazism, stormed by Soviet troops in 1945, the Reichstag has long been an emblem of political instability.

Remade anew by British architect Norman Foster and crowned by a massive new glass dome, the renovated Reichstag is a blunt attempt to reconcile a troubled past with a hopeful future rooted in democratic principles. To that end, the building now houses a series of vast new public spaces in addition to the assembly chamber and party offices.

But it is the enormous glass dome--whose glistening form is visible throughout this city--that sums up the new building’s main theme: the belief that a healthy democracy demands the watchful eye of the ordinary citizen. Foster turns the expected relationship between government and public upside down, symbolically placing the public above its parliament. By stacking a series of spiraling public ramps and viewing decks above the main assembly chamber and encasing them in glass, he has elegantly revealed the core of the 19th century structure. It is a spectacular gesture, in part for its stubborn literal-mindedness. Yet while transparency cannot guarantee democratic freedom, Foster’s design graphically represents reunified Germany’s obsessive desire to both reveal and remake its identity.

The original Reichstag, designed by Paul Wallot, was not inspired architecture. Its Neoclassical facades--marked by ornate Corinthian columns--are slightly overwrought. Its massive form is heavy and inelegant. But the building’s cultural importance stems from its history. It was commissioned under an imperial government, not an elected president, and it only functioned as the seat of a true democratic parliament from 1918 to 1933, during the time of the Weimar Republic. Under the Nazis, it was used briefly as a hospital. After the war, it stood abandoned until the 1950s, when the West German government removed the original steel dome and gutted the building’s interiors to make room for additional government offices. Since then, it has housed lower-level officials and an art gallery devoted to German history.

In 1992, a competition was held to renovate the building, following the decision to once again make Berlin the capital of a unified Germany. Foster’s winning scheme proposed covering the entire building and the adjacent western plaza with a giant steel-and-glass canopy supported by slender, 190-foot-high columns. He wanted to link the building directly to the plaza, once the site of massive public demonstrations--most recently when the Berlin Wall was torn down. Foster hoped to extend the spirit of a spontaneous public gathering place through to the building; he designed interior courtyards, a rooftop terrace and a restaurant, all open to the public.

But the building’s program and budget subsequently were significantly scaled back, and Foster was forced to completely revise his scheme. The result--which still cost $165 million--is more compact, less radical. Foster discarded the large-scale enclosure and instead reshaped the original dome using glass in place of steel. It is nevertheless a significant change: Where the 19th century version of the dome was low and forbidding, this one shimmers in the day and glows like a beacon at night.

As important, Foster’s original impulse remains intact. His dome creates a new and completely public space. From the main lobby, visitors shoot up elevators to the roof terrace before climbing 50 feet up delicate spiraling ramps to the viewing platform on top. An enormous inverted cone extends down from the dome’s center into the assembly hall. Clad in 365 shimmering mirrors, the cone both reflects natural light into the hall and siphons heat from the chamber below out through the roof. In order to further control the light inside, a giant sun shield--powered by solar energy--can be moved around the dome’s interior to block direct sunlight on bright days.

The notion of transparency continues inside. Towering glass walls frame two sides of the main assembly chamber, with views up to bridges that connect the various offices and out toward the western plaza. Invited guests will enter the chamber via the mezzanine level, a series of steel walkways woven through what was once a two-story-high first floor. From there, they will step down onto balconies cantilevered over the main assembly hall. A smaller internal dome--also made of glass--will allow journalists to peer down at the activity inside or intercept party members as they leave closed-door conferences. One can easily imagineministers scurrying back and forth under the gaze of curious onlookers.

Foster sought to heighten the contrast between his sleek, modern elements and the building’s original stonework by preserving some historical scars. Along one wall of the main entry floor, for example, Foster uncovered the graffiti left by Soviet soldiers after they stormed the building in 1945. Names and dates, obscene comments, a reference to the battle of Stalingrad--all are revealed in perpetuity. Foster also saved marks left by earlier renovations, when the building’s vaulted corridors were torn out to make way for additional floors. In preserving the imprint of the turmoil that underscores the building’s past, he pays homage to its endurance.

Still, claims about the building’s ability to function as a new kind of democratic forum are misleading. The public remains segregated from the workings of government here, as in any conventional government building. Only the invited can enter the assembly chamber. And even more critical to the success or failure of the design, despite the avowed symbolism of openness, it’s impossible to make out what is going on inside the assembly chamber from the height of the dome’s ramps. Most visitors are likely to turn toward the more spectacular view of the city. In truth, the building offers only the illusion of inclusiveness.

The idea that glass and light function as symbols of a new democratic era is not new in German architecture. To Mies van der Rohe glass was about reflection, not clarity. In Gunter Behnisch’s design for the West German parliament building in Bonn, completed in the early 1990s, he created a glass box for the assembly chamber, revealing it to people passing by outside. But in the context of Berlin, glass also evokes more sinister images: the shattered windows of Kristallnacht, the fragility of man’s humanity.

In the end, the redesign of the Reichstag says as much about architecture’s limits as it does about its value. Glass shatters. Buildings burn. Rights and liberties can be taken away. Symbols of political freedom can be manipulated. It is perhaps ironic that as the Reichstag opens its doors in Berlin, German warplanes in Yugoslavia are taking part in their first military action since World War II. Perhaps what Foster’s building tells us above all is that even the best human values are as delicate as glass.

Back to Berlin: * Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder ushers parliament back to Berlin’s Reichstag, ending a 50-year exile of the capital to Bonn. A Section.