The halting pace of the building project at the center of Berlin will move ahead this week by two full steps: a Communist building will be gone and designs for a Prussian building will be unveiled. None of which means the arguments around the project will be coming to an end any time soon. It's fitting that on the day that the final remnant of the Palast der Republik, the former capital building of communist East Germany, was scheduled to be cleared, a hydrolic shovel broke down, thereby forcing the foreman to push back the demolition from Wednesday to Friday. It is not the first form of delay and postponement, second-guessing and backtracking encountered by this project. Ever since its 1989 reunification, the city of Berlin has been involved in one form or another with the clearing of the old East Berlin landmark -- most recently as a prelude to the reconstruction of the Prussian-era Berlin City Palace that once stood on the site and had been itself demolished to make way for the communist building.
The halting pace of the building project at the center of Berlin will move ahead this week by two full steps: a Communist building will be gone and designs for a Prussian building will be unveiled. None of which means the arguments around the project will be coming to an end any time soon.
It's fitting that on the day that the final remnant of the Palast der Republik, the former capital building of communist East Germany, was scheduled to be cleared, a hydrolic shovel broke down, thereby forcing the foreman to push back the demolition from Wednesday to Friday.
It is not the first form of delay and postponement, second-guessing and backtracking encountered by this project. Ever since its 1989 reunification, the city of Berlin has been involved in one form or another with the clearing of the old East Berlin landmark -- most recently as a prelude to the reconstruction of the Prussian-era Berlin City Palace that once stood on the site and had been itself demolished to make way for the communist building.
