Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan:
Berlin's Museum Island, is a complex of world renowned museums that are slowly being restored to their former glory.
The newest building, the James Simon Gallery, will act as a reception center, linking the five major museums on the UNESCO world heritage site, and finally forming a single entry point for the millions of visitors who visit Berlin's cultural jewel each year. The new James Simon Gallery is named after a Jewish businessman who had been a well-known patron of the arts in Berlin in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and who contributed to the collections currently housed in the island's museums.
"We are very, very happy with this design," said Peter-Klaus Schuster, director of the Berlin state museum authority.
Schuster was full of praise for the plans to build a colonnade on the upper level of the building, echoing that built in the mid-19th century by Friedrich August Stler. "We knew what we build here has to have the dignity of a temple," he said, adding that he was sure Chipperfield's design had achieved exactly that.
The president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, argued that the building was in keeping with the history of the island, which had constantly renewed itself over the years. "Every architect has left traces of his own era here -- from Wilhelminism to the robust buildings of the 1930s," he said.
The Museum Island is situated in the former East Berlin, and after the Berlin Wall fell it still bore the scars of bombing and intense gun battles from the end of World War II. Since reunification, the government has spent hundreds of millions of euros restoring the museums. The latest to reopen was the Bode Museum, in October 2006, which is devoted mostly to sculpture. The Berlin authorities are hoping that when the gallery is completed in 2012, the island will become the world's biggest museum complex, rivalling the Louvre in Paris.
The new James Simon Gallery will link the island's five museums:
DDP
A computer simulation of the Braunschweig Palace. The baroque exterior of the former royal residence masks a brand-new shopping center inside.
REUTERS
REUTERS:
The new entrance building to Berlin's Museum Island, by
British architect David Chipperfield, had been commissioned to create a unifying design for the island:
On the other side of the grand boulevard Unter den Linden, the former Hohenzollern Berlin palace is to be rebuilt.
BAROQUE HITS BACK
Germany Rebuilds its Imperial Palaces
By Matthias Schulz
The palace, known as the Stadtschloss, had been knocked down after World War II to make way for the East German parliament building. The plans to reconstruct the original palace prompted a veritable culture war in Berlin between those looking for a more innovative building to house contemporary art and those determined to revive Germany's lost imperial grandeur.
Stonemasons are now being hired to chisel the replica cherubs, columns and capitals that will adorn the decorative Baroque facade.
Frderverein Berliner Schloss e.V.
...Good stonemasons are rare. Through want ads in newspapers, the Frderverein has attracted artists from Oberammergau in Bavaria and nearby Dresden. "Who can sculpt Prussian Baroque?" Krner constantly asks himself, "we need only the very best.":
The cobblestone path in Berlin's Pankow neighborhood leads into the courtyard behind Matthias Krner's house, where a loud hammering noise can be heard. The man holds a wooden hammer made of white beech in one hand, while passing an indented chisel across the head of a bull with the other. He is sweating. "Stone sculpture is a dying art," he says.
But there is no sense that what Krner is doing here in this dust-filled courtyard is in any way outmoded. A composite capital made of clay, crowned by an eagle, sits on the ground, next to it a worn, 300-year-old trumpeting angel. The artist is working on a small model of the Borussia -- the symbol of Prussia.
Krner, a master sculptor from the former East Germany, is a key figure in the reconstruction of Berlin's Stadtschloss (City Palace). In July of 2002, the German parliament voted by 380 to 133 in favor of having the royal residence rebuilt. Three external walls have been approved. The design of the side of the building that will face the River Spree is still to be decided. Krner is in the process of executing the designs. With painstaking precision he creates replicas of the acanthus leaves, lions' heads and dying warriors depicted on the original faade.
All of this is merely a prelude of what is to come. A gargantuan effort will be necessary to achieve the goals of the project, and it will require anywhere from 200 to 400 sculptors: men wearing mittens who are capable of chiseling balustrades, herms and rosettes out of stone. Wire saws will come in handy to build the standardized cornices and ashlars.
All the effort will be necessary. The Stadtschloss built by Frederick I was a colossus and a reflection of the glory of Versailles. In 1698, the wigged nobleman, who was still living in Knigsberg (now Kaliningrad) at the time, ordered a new country house built on the banks of the River Spree. The resulting building along the river bank occupied a footprint of 192 by 117 meters (630 by 384 feet, or about six acres). The cupola on the palace's western faade rose 74 meters (243 feet) into the sky.
The first king of Prussia (who fell from a carriage as a young child and spent the rest of his life handicapped and hunched over) had been criticized by his own forefathers for his "Asiatic pomp." By the time Frederick's new home was complete, the country was on the verge of bankruptcy.
But it had gained an attraction. Leibnitz, the inventor of integral calculus, was a regular visitor to the Berlin Stadtschloss. Alexander von Humboldt and the philosopher Schelling were later invited to tea in the parlour. Kaiser Wilhelm II experienced the end of World War I in the southern wing, before packing his bags and heading into exile. A short time later, Karl Liebknecht opened the balcony window above one of the portals to proclaim the founding of the republic.
All that eventually went up in a cloud of smoke and dynamite. Walter Ulbricht, the long-time ruler of East Germany, had the residence blown up in 1950. Berlin lost its center and got the Palace of the Republic in return, a building derisively known as "Erich's lamp shop," a dubious honor for Ulbricht's successor Erich Honecker.
Cranes swivel through the air above the hollowed-out ruin. Blue sparks dance as workers with cutting torches cut the steel frame into pieces. The scrap and rubble are quickly loaded onto cargo barges on the River Spree and removed from the site.
Wolfgang Tiefensee, a Social Democrat and Germany's transportation and construction minister, has pushed to see the project speeded up. According to his new schedule for the rebirth of Frederick I's Prussian palace, the architectural competition will be announced this year, and he plans to have the foundation poured in 2010. How the state will pay the project's estimated cost of 480 million remains open. A private foundation plans to put up the money for the historic faade, slated to cost about 80 million, and has already committed 14 million.
Initially maligned by Die Welt as a "band of palace counterfeiters," the groups that advocate the building of replicas of demolished buildings suddenly find themselves the winners of the debate.
Wilhelm von Boddien, the head of the Frderverein (Promotional Association) is lobbying for the reconstruction of Berlin's Stadtschloss. von Boddien is beset by worries. Only now, as the undertaking becomes more imminent, is its true scale becoming clear. The royal residence had 488 windows, some as big as garage doors. About 700 meters (2,297 feet) of faade has to be reconstructed, complete with figures like that of a cudgel-swinging Hercules. Forty-seven eagles with widespread wings hung resplendent under the roof -- the largest had a wingspan of 2.6 meters (8.5 feet).
All of this decorative material was created under the supervision of the brilliant Andreas Schlter. He had just returned from a trip to Italy when, in 1699, he took the position of court architect. Nicknamed the "Michelangelo of the North," Schlter had up to 100 tons of heavy blocks of sandstone, a costly building material, shipped up the Elbe River from the mountains of Saxony.
Ornament-makers and mortar-mixers spent years standing in the dust on the island in the River Spree where the palace was being constructed. The stone entablature on the roof of the building was so overloaded with acanthus leaves, egg and dart ornaments, metopes and cornice moldings that modern imitators can only shudder at the thought of the task ahead. According to Krner, the sculptor, "it takes a professional a year to replicate a capital on a column."
Marrying the historic decorative faade to the modern steel and concrete interior is another challenging task. The rebuilding of the Alte Kommandatur (Old Army Headquarters) in Berlin, commissioned in 2003 by the Bertelsmann Group, is a case in point for everything that can go wrong with this sort of project. The planners chose two layers of masonry with insulation in between. But because of the tremendous temperature differences, cracks are already appearing in the wall.
Architect Rupert Stuhlemmer and his son York intend to take a different approach to building the Berlin Stadtschloss. Their plan calls for the construction of a massive, external stone wall, at least one meter (about three feet) thick. The heavy decorative elements, made of natural stone, would then be attached to the wall.
Large elevation drawings of the southern faade hang on the wall in the Stuhlemmers' office. The father-and-son team reviewed thousands of photos, yellowed plans and construction records to complete their work. "We redrew each individual stone, down to the last millimeter, and give it a number," says York. The first stones are already being chiseled into shape in Pirna, Potsdam and Dresden.
The German capital isn't alone in its enthusiasm for the architecture of the past. Architect Rupert Stuhlemmer and his son York intend to take a different approach to building the Berlin Stadtschloss. Their plan calls for the construction of a massive, external stone wall, at least one meter (about three feet) thick. The heavy decorative elements, made of natural stone, would then be attached to the wall.
Large elevation drawings of the southern faade hang on the wall in the Stuhlemmers' office. The father-and-son team reviewed thousands of photos, yellowed plans and construction records to complete their work. "We redrew each individual stone, down to the last millimeter, and give it a number," says York. The first stones are already being chiseled into shape in Pirna, Potsdam and Dresden.
The German capital isn't alone in its enthusiasm for the architecture of the past. Architect Rupert Stuhlemmer and his son York intend to take a different approach to building the Berlin Stadtschloss. Their plan calls for the construction of a massive, external stone wall, at least one meter (about three feet) thick. The heavy decorative elements, made of natural stone, would then be attached to the wall.
Large elevation drawings of the southern faade hang on the wall in the Stuhlemmers' office. The father-and-son team reviewed thousands of photos, yellowed plans and construction records to complete their work. "We redrew each individual stone, down to the last millimeter, and give it a number," says York. The first stones are already being chiseled into shape in Pirna, Potsdam and Dresden.
The German capital isn't alone in its enthusiasm for the architecture of the past. Architect Rupert Stuhlemmer and his son York intend to take a different approach to building the Berlin Stadtschloss. Their plan calls for the construction of a massive, external stone wall, at least one meter (about three feet) thick. The heavy decorative elements, made of natural stone, would then be attached to the wall.
Large elevation drawings of the southern faade hang on the wall in the Stuhlemmers' office. The father-and-son team reviewed thousands of photos, yellowed plans and construction records to complete their work. "We redrew each individual stone, down to the last millimeter, and give it a number," says York. The first stones are already being chiseled into shape in Pirna, Potsdam and Dresden.
Frderverein Berliner Schloss e.V.
An artist's impression of how the rebuilt Berlin Stadtschloss will look, when viewed from the bridge over the River Spree.
How the palace's Knight's Hall should look when it is completed. The task ahead is daunting. The royal residence had 488 windows alone. About 700 meters of facade will have to be reconstructed.:
The emperor's chamber. The original building was designed by the court architect Andreas Schlter, dubbed the "Michelangelo of the North." He transported sandstone by river from the mountains of Saxony. :
The German capital isn't alone in its enthusiasm for the architecture of the past. Encouraged by the success story of Dresden's Frauenkirche, other communities are longing for their own cherubs and columns. In a number of German cities, there is growing pressure to resurrect old palaces that were flattened by the bombs of World War II or fell victim to the wrecking balls of postwar ideology:
In Hanover, a citizens' initiative wants to see a replica built of the palace that was destroyed in 1943.
After wrestling with the issue for some time, the city of Potsdam, near Berlin, has decided to build the new parliament building for the state of Brandenburg on the footprint of the city's former palace. There is still disagreement about the eventual exterior design.
Frankfurt plans to demolish its "Technisches Rathaus" (Technical City Hall). In an effort to rebuild old Frankfurt, the city want to fill the giant hole the demolition will leave behind with rows of replica medieval houses.
Meanwhile, Germany's cities are creating facts on the ground. The work is farthest along in downtown Braunschweig where the war-damaged palace of the Welfen dynasty stood until 1960. Then the city council had it torn down and buried the decorative faade in a nearby clay pit. Furious discussions on the destruction went on for years.
When an investor agreed to pay for the rebuilding of the palace a few years ago, he triggered a wave of public enthusiasm. Elderly residents remembered the buried rubble from the building, which was carefully incorporated into the late classical faade -- some of the columns weigh as much as three tons. The replica palace is due to open on May 6 of this year.
But there is just one hitch. The palace is little more than an ornate entrance to a huge, 30,000-square-meter shopping center behind it -- built by ECE, a multinational shopping mall developer. The replica palace is nothing but an "historical tapestry" thrown over this modern temple to commerce, say critics: brilliant in front but banal at the back.
But most critics have been silenced by the exquisite gravity and power of Braunschweig's 116-meter-wide, portal-crowned sandstone fortress. And expressions of displeasure are cancelled out by the fact that they are usually voiced from offices in ornate Art Deco mansions.
When the campanile on St. Mark's Square in Venice collapsed in 1902, it was quickly rebuilt. Warsaw Castle and the monastery at Monte Cassino, where St. Benedict once founded western monasticism, are both copies.
EAST GERMAN COMMUNIST TERROR AND DESTRUCTION:
The Berlin Stadtschloss was the city residence of the Hohenzollern dynasty which ruled Prussia and then Germany until Kaiser Wilhelm II was forced to abdicate in 1918. The East German parliament, the Palace of the Republic, was built on the same site. It is currently being demolished.
Old East German files reveal that Walter Ulbricht promised (because of the tremendous opposition to the demolition) to rebuild the palace on a different site when the general state of the economy improved. Experts took 5,000 detailed photographs of the ruins, and all sculptures were dismantled.
Investigators discovered that the decorative elements from the Stadtschloss's faade ended up at a state-owned underground engineering site in Berlin's Heinersdorf district, where hundreds of windowsills, architraves and carved ram's heads were meticulously arranged in huts. But the warehouses soon deteriorated and the East German government had the best pieces removed and stored in museum basements. The site was eventually bulldozed.
Jrgen Klimes, the former chief sculptor at the VEB Stuck und Naturstein (State Stucco and Natural Stone Enterprise) remembers seeing bulldozers pushing the remains of the magnificent Baroque stone palace into a hollow and covering them with dirt.
But where was the site? Last year the Frderverein had the tar surface layer torn open in several spots on the abandoned grounds. But the effort produced only one sculpture from Portal II. Next month the foundation plans to spend another 50,000 on the excavation. But will the archeologists hit pay dirt this time?
Wilhelm von Boddien is optimistic. "We have a new tip," he says, his eyes sparkling. "A woman from the allotments next door claims she saw exactly what happened back then."
Reactions are mixed to David Chipperfield's design for a new entrance building to Berlin's Museum Island.
The gallery will be attached to the Pergamon museum, one of Berlin's biggest tourist attractions, which houses a Greek temple as well as parts of the original walls of Babylon. There is also the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Neues Museum, the Bode Museum, and the Altes Museum, which houses an outstanding collection of Greek and Egypt art including the 3,400-year-old bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti.
Queen Nefertiti's bust has been the jewel of the Berlin museum system since it was first put on display in 1923 -- and the German capital is unwilling to part with the temptress. Last month, when Egyptian authorities asked to borrow the sculpture for three months, German authorities turned them down, saying the sculpture was too fragile to travel. The Nefertiti bust, was discovered in late 1912 by German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt. The bust was found in the ruins of court sculptor Thutmose's workshop.
German authorities insist their ownership of Nefertiti is irreproachable -- and that their concerns are for the artifact's well-being. Last year, Dietrich Wildung, curator of the Altes Museum where Nefertiti is housed, conducted a number of tests on the bust. Using CAT scans, he was able to analyze the bust's composition with an unprecedented level of detail.
Once thought to be painted limestone, Wildung now thinks the bust is a limestone core covered with a layer of plaster or gypsum that ranges from four centimeters thick in some places to a scant millimeter on the queen's fine-featured face. "That way the model could be adjusted and altered," Wildung told SPIEGEL ONLINE.
Indeed, a new lighting arrangement reveals fine wrinkles and slight bags under the queen's eyes and on her neck, a level of detail that the plaster made possible. "I think it makes her much more beautiful," Wildung says. "She's a ripe woman, not a cover girl from some TV magazine."
Too precious to risk
But Wildung claims the thin plaster layer rules out foreign travel. "It's much too delicate for a 3,000 kilometer journey," he says. Wildung's been backed up by Cultural Minister Bernd Neumann and the German parliament's Culture Committee, which said last week that the bust was too precious to risk in any way. Resolving the issue is critical. An Egyptian boycott on German museums would threaten future exhibitions of Egyptian artifacts, a steady crowd-pleaser for museums all over the world. Hawass has even threatened to organize a worldwide boycott on German museums if Nefertiti isn't allowed home for a visit -- unlikely to materialize, but still bad for Germany's image.
And with a million Germans visiting Egypt every year, Egypt has an interest in working out a deal as well. "We need each other. We need dialogue, not confrontation," al-Orabi says. "After all, Egyptian heritage is human heritage."
smd/ap/afp
Berlin's Museum Island, is a complex of world renowned museums that are slowly being restored to their former glory.
The newest building, the James Simon Gallery, will act as a reception center, linking the five major museums on the UNESCO world heritage site, and finally forming a single entry point for the millions of visitors who visit Berlin's cultural jewel each year. The new James Simon Gallery is named after a Jewish businessman who had been a well-known patron of the arts in Berlin in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and who contributed to the collections currently housed in the island's museums.
"We are very, very happy with this design," said Peter-Klaus Schuster, director of the Berlin state museum authority.
Schuster was full of praise for the plans to build a colonnade on the upper level of the building, echoing that built in the mid-19th century by Friedrich August Stler. "We knew what we build here has to have the dignity of a temple," he said, adding that he was sure Chipperfield's design had achieved exactly that.
The president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, argued that the building was in keeping with the history of the island, which had constantly renewed itself over the years. "Every architect has left traces of his own era here -- from Wilhelminism to the robust buildings of the 1930s," he said.
The Museum Island is situated in the former East Berlin, and after the Berlin Wall fell it still bore the scars of bombing and intense gun battles from the end of World War II. Since reunification, the government has spent hundreds of millions of euros restoring the museums. The latest to reopen was the Bode Museum, in October 2006, which is devoted mostly to sculpture. The Berlin authorities are hoping that when the gallery is completed in 2012, the island will become the world's biggest museum complex, rivalling the Louvre in Paris.
The new James Simon Gallery will link the island's five museums:
DDP
A computer simulation of the Braunschweig Palace. The baroque exterior of the former royal residence masks a brand-new shopping center inside.
REUTERS
REUTERS:The new entrance building to Berlin's Museum Island, by
British architect David Chipperfield, had been commissioned to create a unifying design for the island:
On the other side of the grand boulevard Unter den Linden, the former Hohenzollern Berlin palace is to be rebuilt.
BAROQUE HITS BACK
Germany Rebuilds its Imperial Palaces
By Matthias Schulz
The palace, known as the Stadtschloss, had been knocked down after World War II to make way for the East German parliament building. The plans to reconstruct the original palace prompted a veritable culture war in Berlin between those looking for a more innovative building to house contemporary art and those determined to revive Germany's lost imperial grandeur.
Stonemasons are now being hired to chisel the replica cherubs, columns and capitals that will adorn the decorative Baroque facade.
Frderverein Berliner Schloss e.V....Good stonemasons are rare. Through want ads in newspapers, the Frderverein has attracted artists from Oberammergau in Bavaria and nearby Dresden. "Who can sculpt Prussian Baroque?" Krner constantly asks himself, "we need only the very best.":
The cobblestone path in Berlin's Pankow neighborhood leads into the courtyard behind Matthias Krner's house, where a loud hammering noise can be heard. The man holds a wooden hammer made of white beech in one hand, while passing an indented chisel across the head of a bull with the other. He is sweating. "Stone sculpture is a dying art," he says.
But there is no sense that what Krner is doing here in this dust-filled courtyard is in any way outmoded. A composite capital made of clay, crowned by an eagle, sits on the ground, next to it a worn, 300-year-old trumpeting angel. The artist is working on a small model of the Borussia -- the symbol of Prussia.
Krner, a master sculptor from the former East Germany, is a key figure in the reconstruction of Berlin's Stadtschloss (City Palace). In July of 2002, the German parliament voted by 380 to 133 in favor of having the royal residence rebuilt. Three external walls have been approved. The design of the side of the building that will face the River Spree is still to be decided. Krner is in the process of executing the designs. With painstaking precision he creates replicas of the acanthus leaves, lions' heads and dying warriors depicted on the original faade.
All of this is merely a prelude of what is to come. A gargantuan effort will be necessary to achieve the goals of the project, and it will require anywhere from 200 to 400 sculptors: men wearing mittens who are capable of chiseling balustrades, herms and rosettes out of stone. Wire saws will come in handy to build the standardized cornices and ashlars.
All the effort will be necessary. The Stadtschloss built by Frederick I was a colossus and a reflection of the glory of Versailles. In 1698, the wigged nobleman, who was still living in Knigsberg (now Kaliningrad) at the time, ordered a new country house built on the banks of the River Spree. The resulting building along the river bank occupied a footprint of 192 by 117 meters (630 by 384 feet, or about six acres). The cupola on the palace's western faade rose 74 meters (243 feet) into the sky.
The first king of Prussia (who fell from a carriage as a young child and spent the rest of his life handicapped and hunched over) had been criticized by his own forefathers for his "Asiatic pomp." By the time Frederick's new home was complete, the country was on the verge of bankruptcy.
But it had gained an attraction. Leibnitz, the inventor of integral calculus, was a regular visitor to the Berlin Stadtschloss. Alexander von Humboldt and the philosopher Schelling were later invited to tea in the parlour. Kaiser Wilhelm II experienced the end of World War I in the southern wing, before packing his bags and heading into exile. A short time later, Karl Liebknecht opened the balcony window above one of the portals to proclaim the founding of the republic.
All that eventually went up in a cloud of smoke and dynamite. Walter Ulbricht, the long-time ruler of East Germany, had the residence blown up in 1950. Berlin lost its center and got the Palace of the Republic in return, a building derisively known as "Erich's lamp shop," a dubious honor for Ulbricht's successor Erich Honecker.
Cranes swivel through the air above the hollowed-out ruin. Blue sparks dance as workers with cutting torches cut the steel frame into pieces. The scrap and rubble are quickly loaded onto cargo barges on the River Spree and removed from the site.
Wolfgang Tiefensee, a Social Democrat and Germany's transportation and construction minister, has pushed to see the project speeded up. According to his new schedule for the rebirth of Frederick I's Prussian palace, the architectural competition will be announced this year, and he plans to have the foundation poured in 2010. How the state will pay the project's estimated cost of 480 million remains open. A private foundation plans to put up the money for the historic faade, slated to cost about 80 million, and has already committed 14 million.
Initially maligned by Die Welt as a "band of palace counterfeiters," the groups that advocate the building of replicas of demolished buildings suddenly find themselves the winners of the debate.
Wilhelm von Boddien, the head of the Frderverein (Promotional Association) is lobbying for the reconstruction of Berlin's Stadtschloss. von Boddien is beset by worries. Only now, as the undertaking becomes more imminent, is its true scale becoming clear. The royal residence had 488 windows, some as big as garage doors. About 700 meters (2,297 feet) of faade has to be reconstructed, complete with figures like that of a cudgel-swinging Hercules. Forty-seven eagles with widespread wings hung resplendent under the roof -- the largest had a wingspan of 2.6 meters (8.5 feet).
All of this decorative material was created under the supervision of the brilliant Andreas Schlter. He had just returned from a trip to Italy when, in 1699, he took the position of court architect. Nicknamed the "Michelangelo of the North," Schlter had up to 100 tons of heavy blocks of sandstone, a costly building material, shipped up the Elbe River from the mountains of Saxony.
Ornament-makers and mortar-mixers spent years standing in the dust on the island in the River Spree where the palace was being constructed. The stone entablature on the roof of the building was so overloaded with acanthus leaves, egg and dart ornaments, metopes and cornice moldings that modern imitators can only shudder at the thought of the task ahead. According to Krner, the sculptor, "it takes a professional a year to replicate a capital on a column."
Marrying the historic decorative faade to the modern steel and concrete interior is another challenging task. The rebuilding of the Alte Kommandatur (Old Army Headquarters) in Berlin, commissioned in 2003 by the Bertelsmann Group, is a case in point for everything that can go wrong with this sort of project. The planners chose two layers of masonry with insulation in between. But because of the tremendous temperature differences, cracks are already appearing in the wall.
Architect Rupert Stuhlemmer and his son York intend to take a different approach to building the Berlin Stadtschloss. Their plan calls for the construction of a massive, external stone wall, at least one meter (about three feet) thick. The heavy decorative elements, made of natural stone, would then be attached to the wall.
Large elevation drawings of the southern faade hang on the wall in the Stuhlemmers' office. The father-and-son team reviewed thousands of photos, yellowed plans and construction records to complete their work. "We redrew each individual stone, down to the last millimeter, and give it a number," says York. The first stones are already being chiseled into shape in Pirna, Potsdam and Dresden.
The German capital isn't alone in its enthusiasm for the architecture of the past. Architect Rupert Stuhlemmer and his son York intend to take a different approach to building the Berlin Stadtschloss. Their plan calls for the construction of a massive, external stone wall, at least one meter (about three feet) thick. The heavy decorative elements, made of natural stone, would then be attached to the wall.
Large elevation drawings of the southern faade hang on the wall in the Stuhlemmers' office. The father-and-son team reviewed thousands of photos, yellowed plans and construction records to complete their work. "We redrew each individual stone, down to the last millimeter, and give it a number," says York. The first stones are already being chiseled into shape in Pirna, Potsdam and Dresden.
The German capital isn't alone in its enthusiasm for the architecture of the past. Architect Rupert Stuhlemmer and his son York intend to take a different approach to building the Berlin Stadtschloss. Their plan calls for the construction of a massive, external stone wall, at least one meter (about three feet) thick. The heavy decorative elements, made of natural stone, would then be attached to the wall.
Large elevation drawings of the southern faade hang on the wall in the Stuhlemmers' office. The father-and-son team reviewed thousands of photos, yellowed plans and construction records to complete their work. "We redrew each individual stone, down to the last millimeter, and give it a number," says York. The first stones are already being chiseled into shape in Pirna, Potsdam and Dresden.
The German capital isn't alone in its enthusiasm for the architecture of the past. Architect Rupert Stuhlemmer and his son York intend to take a different approach to building the Berlin Stadtschloss. Their plan calls for the construction of a massive, external stone wall, at least one meter (about three feet) thick. The heavy decorative elements, made of natural stone, would then be attached to the wall.
Large elevation drawings of the southern faade hang on the wall in the Stuhlemmers' office. The father-and-son team reviewed thousands of photos, yellowed plans and construction records to complete their work. "We redrew each individual stone, down to the last millimeter, and give it a number," says York. The first stones are already being chiseled into shape in Pirna, Potsdam and Dresden.
Frderverein Berliner Schloss e.V.
An artist's impression of how the rebuilt Berlin Stadtschloss will look, when viewed from the bridge over the River Spree.
How the palace's Knight's Hall should look when it is completed. The task ahead is daunting. The royal residence had 488 windows alone. About 700 meters of facade will have to be reconstructed.:
The emperor's chamber. The original building was designed by the court architect Andreas Schlter, dubbed the "Michelangelo of the North." He transported sandstone by river from the mountains of Saxony. :
The German capital isn't alone in its enthusiasm for the architecture of the past. Encouraged by the success story of Dresden's Frauenkirche, other communities are longing for their own cherubs and columns. In a number of German cities, there is growing pressure to resurrect old palaces that were flattened by the bombs of World War II or fell victim to the wrecking balls of postwar ideology:
In Hanover, a citizens' initiative wants to see a replica built of the palace that was destroyed in 1943.
After wrestling with the issue for some time, the city of Potsdam, near Berlin, has decided to build the new parliament building for the state of Brandenburg on the footprint of the city's former palace. There is still disagreement about the eventual exterior design.
Frankfurt plans to demolish its "Technisches Rathaus" (Technical City Hall). In an effort to rebuild old Frankfurt, the city want to fill the giant hole the demolition will leave behind with rows of replica medieval houses.
Meanwhile, Germany's cities are creating facts on the ground. The work is farthest along in downtown Braunschweig where the war-damaged palace of the Welfen dynasty stood until 1960. Then the city council had it torn down and buried the decorative faade in a nearby clay pit. Furious discussions on the destruction went on for years.
When an investor agreed to pay for the rebuilding of the palace a few years ago, he triggered a wave of public enthusiasm. Elderly residents remembered the buried rubble from the building, which was carefully incorporated into the late classical faade -- some of the columns weigh as much as three tons. The replica palace is due to open on May 6 of this year.
But there is just one hitch. The palace is little more than an ornate entrance to a huge, 30,000-square-meter shopping center behind it -- built by ECE, a multinational shopping mall developer. The replica palace is nothing but an "historical tapestry" thrown over this modern temple to commerce, say critics: brilliant in front but banal at the back.
But most critics have been silenced by the exquisite gravity and power of Braunschweig's 116-meter-wide, portal-crowned sandstone fortress. And expressions of displeasure are cancelled out by the fact that they are usually voiced from offices in ornate Art Deco mansions.
When the campanile on St. Mark's Square in Venice collapsed in 1902, it was quickly rebuilt. Warsaw Castle and the monastery at Monte Cassino, where St. Benedict once founded western monasticism, are both copies.
EAST GERMAN COMMUNIST TERROR AND DESTRUCTION:
The Berlin Stadtschloss was the city residence of the Hohenzollern dynasty which ruled Prussia and then Germany until Kaiser Wilhelm II was forced to abdicate in 1918. The East German parliament, the Palace of the Republic, was built on the same site. It is currently being demolished.
Old East German files reveal that Walter Ulbricht promised (because of the tremendous opposition to the demolition) to rebuild the palace on a different site when the general state of the economy improved. Experts took 5,000 detailed photographs of the ruins, and all sculptures were dismantled.
Investigators discovered that the decorative elements from the Stadtschloss's faade ended up at a state-owned underground engineering site in Berlin's Heinersdorf district, where hundreds of windowsills, architraves and carved ram's heads were meticulously arranged in huts. But the warehouses soon deteriorated and the East German government had the best pieces removed and stored in museum basements. The site was eventually bulldozed.
Jrgen Klimes, the former chief sculptor at the VEB Stuck und Naturstein (State Stucco and Natural Stone Enterprise) remembers seeing bulldozers pushing the remains of the magnificent Baroque stone palace into a hollow and covering them with dirt.
But where was the site? Last year the Frderverein had the tar surface layer torn open in several spots on the abandoned grounds. But the effort produced only one sculpture from Portal II. Next month the foundation plans to spend another 50,000 on the excavation. But will the archeologists hit pay dirt this time?
Wilhelm von Boddien is optimistic. "We have a new tip," he says, his eyes sparkling. "A woman from the allotments next door claims she saw exactly what happened back then."
Reactions are mixed to David Chipperfield's design for a new entrance building to Berlin's Museum Island.
The gallery will be attached to the Pergamon museum, one of Berlin's biggest tourist attractions, which houses a Greek temple as well as parts of the original walls of Babylon. There is also the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Neues Museum, the Bode Museum, and the Altes Museum, which houses an outstanding collection of Greek and Egypt art including the 3,400-year-old bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti.
Queen Nefertiti's bust has been the jewel of the Berlin museum system since it was first put on display in 1923 -- and the German capital is unwilling to part with the temptress. Last month, when Egyptian authorities asked to borrow the sculpture for three months, German authorities turned them down, saying the sculpture was too fragile to travel. The Nefertiti bust, was discovered in late 1912 by German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt. The bust was found in the ruins of court sculptor Thutmose's workshop.
German authorities insist their ownership of Nefertiti is irreproachable -- and that their concerns are for the artifact's well-being. Last year, Dietrich Wildung, curator of the Altes Museum where Nefertiti is housed, conducted a number of tests on the bust. Using CAT scans, he was able to analyze the bust's composition with an unprecedented level of detail.
Once thought to be painted limestone, Wildung now thinks the bust is a limestone core covered with a layer of plaster or gypsum that ranges from four centimeters thick in some places to a scant millimeter on the queen's fine-featured face. "That way the model could be adjusted and altered," Wildung told SPIEGEL ONLINE.
Indeed, a new lighting arrangement reveals fine wrinkles and slight bags under the queen's eyes and on her neck, a level of detail that the plaster made possible. "I think it makes her much more beautiful," Wildung says. "She's a ripe woman, not a cover girl from some TV magazine."
Too precious to risk
But Wildung claims the thin plaster layer rules out foreign travel. "It's much too delicate for a 3,000 kilometer journey," he says. Wildung's been backed up by Cultural Minister Bernd Neumann and the German parliament's Culture Committee, which said last week that the bust was too precious to risk in any way. Resolving the issue is critical. An Egyptian boycott on German museums would threaten future exhibitions of Egyptian artifacts, a steady crowd-pleaser for museums all over the world. Hawass has even threatened to organize a worldwide boycott on German museums if Nefertiti isn't allowed home for a visit -- unlikely to materialize, but still bad for Germany's image.
And with a million Germans visiting Egypt every year, Egypt has an interest in working out a deal as well. "We need each other. We need dialogue, not confrontation," al-Orabi says. "After all, Egyptian heritage is human heritage."
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