Reichstag (endearingly, R-tag)

I've had a lot of problems with the formatting of this page, so hopefully the grey boxes are where they should be--perfectly behind the readings, but if they aren't, I'm quite sorry.

I spent a really long time researching the Reichstag and have reached to the conclusion (to really downplay it), that the whole reason it's such a SYMBOL (ooh, buzzword!) of Germany and of Berlin is all rather arbitrary. But, as some of these readings suggest--people take their symbols, arbitrary or not, QUITE seriously. Although Hitler never even used the Reichstag to carry out the governing of the Third Reich, it was still the building that the Soviet soldiers flocked to during the Siege, staging the famous photograph (in the image gallery) where they symbolically raise the Red flag over the ledge of the building, signifying victory and an end to Hitler's wordsaren'tenoughtofullydescribehowterrible regime.

Despite its status as this staid 'institution' in Berlin, I love this building in its current state. Much of Wallot's original ornamentation has been stripped and Foster's eco refurbishments are just pretty damn cool (and quite attractive). I also completely love the idea of Christo's Summer '95 wrapping.

Michael S. Cullen - the premiere Reichstag historian - sent Christo and his wife, Jean-Claude, a postcard in the mid 70s suggesting that they consider a project to wrap the Reichstag. The process took over thirty years of bureaucratic hoops and finagling, but once everything came together, Berlin was once again seen as a destination city. The shimmery, silvery fabric (rarely accurately captured on film) remained covering the building for just two short weeks that summer, but the beauty of Christo's monster enviro-installations is that the process of creating them, and the stories people have about them are just as important as the actual works of art. For my final paper in my Berlin German class, I did an 'oral history' project on the Wrapping and emailed a few parliament members -- in a stroke of luck, four of them actually responded, and although my questions weren't terribly prodding and no one felt the need to really expound, they all expressed a nostalgic sense of spectacle and shared experience. For the first time in too many years, Berlin was once again the capital city.