Guest Author - Holly Fox

Tourists even a little bit familiar with the German language and history might be confused by the “Reich” in the name of Germany’s Reichstag Building. How did the world’s most visited parliamentary building end up with the word “empire” in its name? Although the word “Reichstag” was used to describe the original German parliament during the time of the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, today’s parliament is called the “Bundestag,” with the prefix “Bund-” meaning “federal.” However, during World War II, when no true democratic parliament existed and during the Cold War when the West German capital was located in Bonn, the burned, bombed, and eventually restored building kept its imperial sounding name.

The foundation stone was, in fact, laid by German Emperor Wilhelm I on June 9th, 1884. After his death on March 8th, 1888, his son Friedrich III, already sick with cancer of the larynx, ruled for only 99 days. Friedrich’s son Wilhelm II was emperor when construction was completed and the opening ceremony held on December 5th, 1894. All three emperors’ initials can still be found on the ceiling tucked under the western portico.

More visually obvious are the words “Dem Deutschen Volke” or “To the German People,” only added in 1916, near the end of WWI and in the final years of the German Empire. On November 19th, 1918, Imperial Chancellor Prince Max of Baden announced Emperor Wilhelm II’s abdication and Philipp Scheidemann officially announced the new republic from a balcony of the Reichstag Building.

Between the World Wars, the Reichstag Building would act as witness to the chaos of the Weimar Republic and the rise to power of the Nazi party within parliament. The Reichstag fire, which occurred on February 27th, 1933, shortly followed Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor. Although it is not entirely clear who set the fire, the destruction of the parliament building was a convenient excuse for Hitler to suspend civil liberties and set the stage for a one-party dictatorship. Both the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act destroyed any vestiges of democracy from the Weimar era. Under Hitler the sham parliament met in the Kroll Opera across from the Reichstag Building.

After the Russians took Berlin, they raised their Soviet flag over the Reichstag. However, when the capital was later divided into Soviet, British, American, and French sections, the Reichstag would land just barely in the western half. When the GDR built the Berlin Wall in 1961, it would pass directly in front of the former parliamentary building. Nonetheless, Western Germany restored the Reichstag in the sixties, and the building was used for a popular permanent exhibit on German history.

Perhaps because the Reichstag Building practically stood on the border between East and West Germany, the first Bundestag elected by both Germanys met for the first time on October 4th, 1990 in the Reichstag’s plenary hall. The permanent move of country’s capital was not finalized until June 20th, 1991, when the Bundestag voted 338-320 to make the Reichstag Building their new seat. After years of construction and even being wrapped by 100,000 square meters of fabric by Jeanne-Claude and Christo, the Bundestag again met in the new Reichstag Building on September 6th, 1999.

The new Reichstag Building maintains the original look of the imperial façade and the enduring “Dem Deutschen Volke” but what catches the eye is the over 1,300 ton glass dome rising above the building. Part of the building’s transparency theme, the dome is accessible daily from 8 a.m. to midnight. Although the line can be painfully long, the cost is free and the panorama view of Berlin is phenomenal. What the brochure calls “integrated walkways” take visitors from the base of the dome to the top platform in a kind of double-helix with one pathway going up and the other going down along and around the dome wall. The plenary chamber is visible from the dome as well as through the giant glass wall in the entry way.

I’ve visited Berlin three times and the Reichstag Building is still my favorite site to visit. The representation of a rather young republic with a long history through the combination of the imperial façade and the ultra-modern dome doesn’t come across as heavy-handed or clichéd. The building is strangely beautiful and besides, it isn’t really there for the tourists. Even on my first visit to Berlin, with no German language skills, I had an idea what “Dem Deutschen Volke” might mean.