Capital Dilemma:: Germany's Search for a New Architecture of Democracy [Hardcover]

Michael Z. Wise (Author, Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1998

The decision to move Germany's government seat from Bonn to Berlin by the year 2000 poses an epic architectural challenge and has fostered an international debate on which building styles are appropriate to represent German national identity. Capital Dilemma investigates the political decisions and historical events behind the redesign of Berlin's official architecture. It tells a complex and exciting drama of politics, memory, cultural values, and architecture, in which Helmut Kohl, Albert Speer, Sir Norman Foster, and I. M. Pei all figure as players.

If capital city design projects are symbols of national identity and historical consciousness, Berlin is the supreme example. In fact, architecture has played a pivotal role throughout Germany's turbulent twentieth-century history. After the fall of the monarchy, Germany gave birth to the Bauhaus, whose founders argued that their own revolutionary designs could shape human destiny. The century's warring ideologies, Nazism and Communism, also used architecture for their own political ends. In its latest incarnation, Berlin will become the capital of the fifth German state in this century to be ruled from that city. How will the official architecture of reunified Berlin, a democratic capital being built amid totalitarian remains, be different this time around? The Federal Republic of Germany, a highly stable democracy in stark contrast to its predecessors, has been struggling with burdensome architectural legacies. In the process, it has considered remedies as varied as outright destruction, refurbishment, and, in the case of the former Nazi Central Bank now being converted into the new Foreign Ministry, physical concealment.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Thomas Jefferson may have deemed classical forms to be ideally suited to the expression of American democracy, but in the Federal Republic of Germany these same forms often bring out a response that is almost phobic," writes Michael Wise in this book on the chronic controversy surrounding postwar German public architecture. A journalist who has covered Central Europe, Wise brings narrative flair and thoroughgoing research to this story of the politics, aesthetics, and historical implications of Germany's decision, following reunification, to move its government seat from Bonn to Berlin.

Wise makes the tearing down of some old buildings ("Bye, Bye Clunker," read the headline in one Berlin newspaper as the Communist, white aluminum-clad Foreign Ministry fell to the wrecking balls) and the heated arguments over new designs into a fascinating page-turner. In scores of interviews, Wise also found many younger Germans who seemed inured to the "phobia" against classicism, so tainted by Albert Speer's grand designs for the Third Reich. Those in favor of building a replica of the old royal residence, last occupied by Kaiser Wilhelm II in l9l8, were slightly chilling in their naive, right-wing nostalgia, for example. Here is Annette Ahme, head of the Society for Historical Berlin: "Everyone, whether Left or Right, wants a beautiful city, apart from a few intellectuals who say we must continue to suffer from our Nazi-era sins and that these must remain visible."

Wise's ultimate view, that "the Federal Republic has made an exemplary transition from totalitarian rule to democracy," is heartening, because it is believable. This is largely due to his detailed, fair-minded descriptions of the painstaking cultural processes of recent decades. --Peggy Moorman

From Publishers Weekly

Since WWII, Germans have been "grappling to find a design vocabulary that will turn its back on the monumentality typical of their history's most worrisome periods," writes Wise, while still building structures "worthy of a cosmopolitan capital." Like Brian Ladd in his excellent The Ghosts of Berlin, Wise details the symbolic power of the past. But Wise, who covered Central Europe for Reuters and the Washington Post, is primarily interested inAand most helpful when describingAhow historical awareness shaped the planning of federal buildings. Wise starts by tracing how the need for housing and the desire to avoid Nazi ostentation left East and West with drearily anonymous modernist cities. After reunification, competitions yielded a variety of designs: a plan for a federal mall reminded some lawmakers of Albert Speer's planned North-South axis; others feared the monumentality of a proposed elliptical black granite presidential office and requested a "more modest material like unglazed brick"; a plan for a Chancellery with, horribile dictu, columns made some even more nervous. "'Classicism by virtue of having been requisitioned by Hitler,' " said one parliamentarian, "'is simply impossible to use again.'" New buildings weren't the only problems, and Wise does a fine job of detailing attempts to shoehorn federal departments into existing Nazi buildings, as when the Finance Ministry was put into G?ring's old Aviation Ministry. If sections on the old Hohenzollern Palace site, the former arsenal or various memorials seem to stretch the book's natural focus, it's still a concise and accessible study of a deeply complicated issue.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press; 1 edition (April 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568981341
• ISBN-13: 978-1568981345
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,434,663 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting reading, May 3, 1999

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Senthil Sabanayagam, [e-mail] (Cincinnati, U.S.A.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Capital Dilemma:: Germany's Search for a New Architecture of Democracy (Hardcover)

Capital Dilemma is one of those books that talk about architecture with a slight hue of fiction, which makes interesting reading. The subject matter itself is very intriguing in that it deals with the plots that Germany was subjected to through its rather tumultuous history. Architecture assumes importance as a manouvreable political tool. The classical buildings standing over time accrue layers of significance as they play host to various disparate and historically significant events of the different political eras of Germany. Also the predicament faced by contemporary Germany in its search for a new identitiy reflects strongly on the indecisive and wavering nature of contemporary planning and development control. All these are brought to light effectively by Michael Wiese, who surprisingly, is not an architectural critic. Aided generously by some good photographs, the narrative is equally exciting when it talks about the history of Hitler's third reich or about the architectural inclinations that marked the attitudes of west and east Germanys before unification. A must read for those interested in German history and politics. Also, anyone interested in the performative and symbolic power of architecture will be delighted by Capital Dilemma.