By transferring the German Parliament from the banks of the Rhine to the historical

The transfer of the German Parliament from the banks of the Reno to those of the Sprea represents a historical turning point for Germany and maybe also for Europe.

Reichstag building, on Monday April 19th , the Republic of Berlin has succeeded after half century the republic of Bonn, the barycentre of the unified Germany has move 500 km east and in the main country of the European Union it has started off a new historical phase. Somebody even asserts that the Republic of Berlin will have a short life, since soon it will be superseded by the Republic of Brussels that is by a European federal government that will deal directly with the Laender. But others are not so sure: with the forthcoming incorporation in the European union of Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary - they say - Berlin will find again its centrality also geographic. The move of the capital, ten years from the fall of the wall, coincides among others, with an entire series of events that -someway - underline its symbolic meaning: the coming to power of a generations of politicians having not lived the second world war and so free from guilty feelings affecting Adenauer, Brandt and even Kohl, the first war engagement of the Bundeswehr in a area - the Balkans - where the Hitler Wehrmacht left a fatal memory; an economic crisis bringing forward in a sense the so called “Renish model“. Even the decision to place the Parliament in the old Reichstag, a building that evokes by the name itself, periods already passed away of the German history, has aroused controversies. Inaugurated in 1894 to host the representatives of the united Germany, nevertheless it was hated by William II. In the collective imaginary the Reichstag is related mainly to the fire having destroyed it on February 27th 1933, just a month later after the taking of power by the Fuehrer. Twelve years after, the building became history again when a soviet soldier set up the red flag over its ruins. In the following carving-up of the town among the occupying forces, the Reichstag ended in the western sector, but only in the sixties the government of Bonn carried out its restoration and avoided employing it till October 3rd 1990, when the Parliament of the united Germany hold its first, solemn sitting. In sight of the definitive return of deputies, the Reichstag has been restored in the nineties and - at the cost of 600 billions- transformed in the most modern Parliament all over the world. The 669 deputies have on disposal five hundreds halls and a 1400 sm. hemicycle, five times greater than the House of Commons and almost twice than the American congress. But the wonder among wonders is the big glass cupola by the English architect Norman Foster. Notwithstanding these innovations changing its look, far as two Germans out of three would want the Reichstag changes the name too and become, according to logic, the Bundestag. “At the place of the old Reich there's now a federal republic, and the building hosting the parliament must reflect this change “, told its president Wolfgang Thierse, one of the few politicians in the east Germany succeeding in rising the State highest office. It would have been another way to ward off history, the Germany's neighbours would maybe appreciate, but the new social democratic chancellor Schroeder has opposed. Germany has not save efforts aimed to make the new capital worthy of its status of great world power. The town reconstruction, started off at once after the reunification, takes 35 thousand billions per year and it is far from being finished. Some works, as the new Potsdammer Platz of the Italian Renzo Piano, have already become destination for pilgrimages. But one thing is town development other is the economic development. For more than one generation, west Berlin has been an 'assisted' city, isolated in the centre of a communist and hostile country, that to survive needed anything: a town, under many aspects, artificial, from which industry was compelled to move and whose inhabitants, prisoners as they were by the Wall, were affect by claustrophobia. Ten years of freedom and huge investments have been not enough neither to erase all that nor to compensate the cut of the government allowances that during the cold war succeeded in keeping alive many activities. By now, almost none of the great German multinationals having their seat formerly at Berlin have decided to get back. From five years the town GDP is at a standstill and in 1998 has even decreased by a 0,4%. The reunification of the two sectors has influenced in a negative way the jobless rate, which - at the 15 per cent - is a time and a half greater than that of the other German metropolis. The attempts to transform the town into a citadel of research an high technology and to attract this way the best brains drop from universities, start giving results, but they will make their effect be sensed only in some years. The nearness of the town to Poland, and on consequence to the entire universe of east Europe has turned it to the destination of a strong migratory flux of the Slavonic world. So to the hundreds of thousands of Turks got there in the seventies, it has added Polish, Russians, Ukrainians and Rumanians. Immigrates are deemed responsible not only of the growth in crime, but also of the degradation of some quarters, and the efforts to promote a new multiethnic society clashes against the Balinese's mistrust, both from east and west. On the other hand, the merger of the two sectors that the town has been dived into till 1989 is not yet finished. To the uncontrollable joy the 'Easters' manifested at the fall of the wall, it has soon taken place a mix of jealousy, resentment and vexation. Overcome the euphoria since having got the access to the consumer goods and the democratic freedom of the west, the inhabitants of the ex East Berlin are irritated by the economic predominance of the so called “Wessies”, for their greater purchasing power, for they systematically hold leading charges. Following the reunification, many of them have lost their job the communist regime ensured them, and must accept to live on pension or to recycle themselves by the means of new more insecure activities. As a reaction in the last election a third of them has voted for the democratic socialism party, direct heir of the old communist party In the space of two years, also the Chancellery and the federal ministers will move to Berlin, involving the corresponding arrive of 50.000 bureaucrats. The real Berlinese are not especially enthusiastic of this invasion, but the mix could bring some advantages: “ The Berlinese”, says the writer Peter Schneider “ trend to repute the inhabitants of Bonn as country naives unable to move in metropolis of four millions inhabitants. These same Berlinese, always ready to make fun of everybody, trend to forget that the town they are so proud of has its turn several defects and notwithstanding its ambitions it is not even for a moment comparable to London or Paris. The years enduring its isolation, the systematic getaway of the intellighenzia, an administration following many defects of the real socialism dominating beyond the wall, do not allow by now competing this level. If the inhabitants of Bonn could understand the spirit of the town, could help to recover, at less partly, the wasted time “. Germans deem that Berlin must expect, in the next century, supremacy alike that of the great town in the continent. The chasing will not be easy, for historical reasons too. While London, Paris and naturally Rome boast more than two thousands years of history, Berlin has been founded at the end of the XIII century, and started developing at the end of the XVII century and has not

Pictures report the model of the new Reichstag, the rebuilt dome and some images of unified Berlin. The plan of new Reichstag is by British Norman Foster, while the restoration of Potsdammer Platz is signed by Italian Renzo Piano.

taken the role of a great capital till the reign of Frederick II the great of Prussia. In the following two hundreds years, under the reign of the Hohenzollern dynasty, the town lived a out of common phase of urban expansion, first following the French taste and then rising the “ whilhemine style “, finally creating between the two wars a leading architecture the whole world envied. Also Hitler, by the means of Albert Speer, tried to leave his imprint in the city, but the war destroyed almost everything, and the different reconstruction of the two Berlin in the post-war, party work done cheaply, has brought to a little schizophrenic town and anyhow very different from the imperial one. The most important heritage is maybe the artistic one, since a sizeable part of the art works have been safeguarded from destruction and the fusion of the east and west rival picture galleries has allowed to form a rich museum. As Renzo Piano has stated, “Drawing a town is a an almost impossible task, since what makes beautiful a town is just what cannot be drawn. And only time makes beautiful a town “.

 

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