- BERLIN, Germany -- The
building
where East Germany decided to re-unify with the west may be flattened and
replaced with a reconstruction of the Prussian palace demolished by the
Communists.
-
- The German Democratic Republic's parliament building
has sat awkwardly in Germany's revamped capital since reunification almost
12 years ago, and some want it demolished.
-
- A body known as the "Schlossplatz Commission"
has been considering its future for more than a year and will give its
final verdict on Wednesday.
-
- The indications so far is that the commission will
support
recreating the old 15-century palace.
-
- The decision would he hugely controversial, leaving many
East Germans lamenting the loss of yet another symbol of their former way
of life and presenting the government with a financial headache ahead of
elections in September. The cost of the reconstruction is put at 770
million
euros ($688 million).
-
- The palace, built in 1443, became the seat of Prussia's
monarchs in the 18th century. It was destroyed in 1950 by the GDR's first
Communist leader, Walter Ulbricht, who called it "a decadent symbol
of Prussia's militaristic past."
-
- The recommendation will come just a day before the
ex-communist
Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) enters Berlin's city government for
the first time, and the PDS deputy leader has voiced deep reservations
about the plans.
-
- "Berlin defines itself as an open city of culture,
scholarship and democracy. Such integral characteristics cannot be confined
within a palace," Petrau Pau told Reuters.
-
- Communist leader Ulbricht ordered the former royal palace
torn down in 1950
-
- The PDS politician designated to be new Culture Senator
in Berlin, Thomas Flierl, is already known and feared by leading figures
on the Berlin cultural scene as a man nostalgic for the old East
Germany.
-
- If the parliament building is demolished, the city will
also lose the "People's Palace," a cultural centre in the
parliament
complex that is another reminder of Berlin's communist era.
-
- The centre, containing restaurants, galleries and a
theatre,
would disappear, but some of the current interiors might be retained inside
the rebuilt Prussian palace.
-
- Lieselotte Schulz, head of an association which has
collected
100,000 signatures in support of the renovation of the "People's
Palace,"
was unimpressed by the commission's plans.
-
- "We don't have a king, we're a republic --
rebuilding
the palace is nonsense," she told Reuters.
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