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A 1995 street fair next to former communist party headquarters
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Since the Berlin Wall became obsolete with the 1989 opening of the borders between East and West Germany, Berliners have witnessed massive reconstruction, mostly in what was formerly East Berlin. The heart of the city, the Mitte district, is being rebuilt and gentrified, though remnants of the communist regime still remain. On the Museuminsel (Museum Island), the glories of Berlin's neoclassical past have been restored, including the Pergamon Museum, which houses reconstructions of structures from Ancient Greece and the Middle East. The 19th-century Reichstag building, which is the new seat of the German parliament, gained a modern glass cupola to replace the original dome destroyed by fire when the Nazis came into power. A museum at the former site of Checkpoint Charlie, the famous border in the American sector, memorializes the Berlin Wall.
The area undergoing the greatest change is the Potsdamer Platz, where the largest of its high-density urban developments inaugurated in 1998 added 19 buildings on over 730,000 square feet of land. At the 1998 opening, the Mercedes-Benz marketing headquarters and the Berliner Volksbank in Potsdamer Platz resided alongside 120 shops, 30 restaurants, 19 cinemas and 600 apartments. Other construction projects in the area are revitalizing the former commercial center of pre-war Berlin, which was reduced to rubble during World War II and then became an empty expanse of land during Soviet occupation. Internationally renowned architects have contributed to the rebuilding efforts, including Arato Isozaki, Renzo Piano and Daniel Libeskind. The originator of the master plan for the area, Christoph Sattler, described the development's successes at achieving "the basic structure of Berlin-typical blocks, narrow streets and parks that we had intended."
Sculpture from Oranienburger Strasse, 1995
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But many are dissatisfied with the rapid transformation that Berlin has undergone. All that remains of the Wall that once surrounded West Berlin are a few reconstructed remnants and two rows of paving stones near Checkpoint Charlie that mark a portion of the site where the massive barrier once stood. The impressive artwork that once adorned the Wall can only be seen in photographs. Some artists have memorialized the Wall through new constructions, like those in a sculpture garden on Oranienburger Strasse. Many people wonder about the benefits of our ability to erase history so completely: how will future generations learn from the deeds of an unseen past?
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