Palast der Republik to be demolished:

I thought it would never happen. The Palast der Republik is actually being demolished, starting January.

Smack in the middle of Berlin is the Schloßplatz, the site of the current Palast der Republik. In the mid 1800's, when it was fashionable to do such things, the current Kaiser demolished and re-built most of Berlin to put his Palace slap-bang in the middle. The roads all gyrate around it.

Naturally, the GDR flattened the castle, as a symbol of the bourgeois. They built the Palast. It is giant, copper coloured, uniform and fantastically ugly. It's ugliness has gone way past brutalist blandness to a cool irony, a bright 'fuck you' in the centre of Berlin. I love it. Most people hate it, some because of the ugliness, some because of the memory of the GDR.
When asbestos was found throughout, the politicians jumped on this as a great reason to knock it down. What they didn't really mention was that you have to remove asbestos before demolition, in exactly the same way as if the building was renovated, and at exactly the same cost.

The public were presented with the choice:

• Keep the Palast, or
• Rebuild the Schloß

I vote the Palast. While both ideas are retrospective, the Palast is real history, the Schloß is a folly (and expensive: at least €400,000,000). I would expect most East Berliners to want the Schloß back and erase the remnant of the GDR, and the West Berliners to be more impartial. But it is the other way around. Is this another case of the West conquering the East?