Berlin City Palace
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 Communist government of East Germany demolished the palace in 1950 as a symbol of bourgeois exploitation and excess, except for the balcony where Karl Liebknecht declared the formation of a short-lived German freie sozialistische Republik (free socialist republic). The Communists erected the Palast der Republik, an ultramodern socialist realist architectural masterwork, on the foundations of the City Palace, and the plaza was renamed Marx-Engels-Platz.
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 Castle; however, funding has not been found yet.
