Berlin's Reichstag went from ruin to glass-domed parliament over a century
Germany's parliament meets in a building that burned in 1933, sat as a shell through the Cold War, and was once wrapped entirely in fabric by artists. Today visitors climb a walk-in glass dome and look straight down into the debating chamber, making it the country's second most visited attraction.
It took two design contests to get built. The 1872 winner could not proceed because the chosen site was occupied by an aristocrat's palace, so a second contest in 1882 drew 200 entries and picked Frankfurt architect Paul Wallot, whose model was Philadelphia's Memorial Hall. Wilhelm I laid the foundation stone on 9 June 1884 and the building opened in 1894, admired for its steel and glass cupola, though critics disliked its jumble of styles. Its four corner towers stand for the four kingdoms of unification.
Its inscription carries a story too. Wilhelm II, no admirer of parliament, tried to block the words Dem deutschen Volke, To the German People, but they went up over the entrance in 1916. On 9 November 1918, hours after his abdication was announced, Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed a republic from one of its balconies.
On 27 February 1933, four weeks after Hitler became chancellor, arson gutted the building. Hitler blamed Communists and used the fire to push through a decree suspending civil liberties. Parliament moved to the nearby Kroll Opera House and never returned during the Nazi years; the Reichstag later served as a fortress, a hospital and a radio tube factory. Left in West Berlin after the war, it was restored in simplified form between 1961 and 1971 but could not host the Bundestag under the 1971 Four Power Agreement.
Reunification changed that. The official ceremony was held there on 3 October 1990, and after a close vote in 1991 parliament chose to return to Berlin. Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the building in 1995, paying for it by selling their own artworks. Norman Foster then gutted everything but the outer walls, keeping Soviet soldiers' graffiti as a visible trace of history, and the Bundestag convened in the new interior on 19 April 1999. A motorised shade tracks the sun across the dome to stop glare reaching the chamber.
Source: Reichstag building
