Berlin City Palace
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The Berlin City Palace (German: Berliner Stadtschloss) was a palace in central Berlin, on Schlossplatz, next to Alexanderplatz.
The City Palace was originally opened in 1443, and was home to the rulers of Brandenburg, then Prussia, and finally, the German Kaisers. After the First World War, it was converted into a museum, and its innards were gutted during the Second World War.
The socialist government of East Germany demolished the palace in 1950 as a symbol of "prussian militarism", except for the balcony of portal IV where Karl Liebknecht declared the formation of a German freie sozialistische Republik (free socialist republic) that never came to existence. The socialists erected the Palast der Republik, a modern socialist realist building, on the foundations of the City Palace, and the plaza was renamed Marx-Engels-Platz. The portal survived as a part of the former State Council Building (Staatsratsgebäude) at the southern end of the place.
After German reunification, the name of the plaza was changed back to Schlossplatz, and the Palast was found to be unsafe due to asbestos. Despite vocal opposition from groups who claim that the Palast is itself historically important and should therefore be saved, in November 2003, the German parliament decided to demolish the Palast der Republik and reconstruct the City Palace; however, funding has not been found yet.
External link
- Förderverein Berliner Schloss e.V. (http://www.berliner-schloss.de/) (Association for the Promotion of the Berlin City Palace)
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