from Monthly Review
Demolishing the Palace of the Republic, A GDR Symbol
go to article

An update, with more extensive background information, on an earlier news story on the impending demolition of an unfortunate architectural icon from the Cold War era. It is also highly ironic (or some might say retributory) that the Palace of the Republic was built on the grounds of a demolished older Prussian palace which suffered heavy damage in the Second World War.

The current decision on whether to demolish the building was put to a vote in parliament and unsurprising, perhaps, the result ran along party and faction lines. The loser in this instance is the collective heritage of the world at large. When politicians are given the final authority in deciding issues of heritage preservation, then it is inevitable that the final decision would suffer because of short-sighted (propagandistic) gains.