Something could have been done with its frame indeed, things were done-exhibitions, concerts, happenings-in the years of its protracted disassembly. Plenty of buildings have asbestos not all are torn down, certainly not entirely. My first question: Why? Why reinvest in the historical seat of the Prussian monarchs more than seventy years after it was wholly demolished by East German officials? Why tear down Palast der Republik, the old GDR parliament building that stood in the same place, a valuable remnant of a country and social model that shaped generations of German citizens, many of whom are still very much alive today? I don’t buy the widely touted asbestos argument. Kind of.īut circumstances require me to keep the tired organ working. Say what you want about tacky resurrectionism, if you switch your brain off, it works. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, the marzipan-colored facade of the wedding-cake monstrosity appeared almost graceful in the soft morning light. It still isn’t open to the public, and Weitz’s scenography firm, chezweitz, had made the only finished installation-a video panorama that narrates the history of the site-so I needed his help to get inside. This new umbrella institution was inaugurated with an online ceremony in mid-December and is set to further centralize Berlin’s cultural landscape, bringing the Museum for Asian Art and the Ethnographic Museum (both part of the State Museums), as well as other initiatives, together under one roof. Yet here it is, 766 million euros later, courtesy of a unanimous Bundestag. In that way, the Humboldt Forum is a bit like Donald Trump or Brexit: I don’t know a single person who thought it was a good idea. For years, every mention of the project has sparked animated discussions of the sort where each statement lights a fire under the next, resulting in extraordinary conflagrations of fury.
My bad-mouthing the reconstructed Baroque Royal Palace had stopped being interesting. “DARLING, AT A CERTAIN POINT ONE MUST STOP BITCHING and get to work,” Detlef Weitz told me when we met at a sun-showered Humboldt Forum shortly before Christmas.
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