Why Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate Still Makes Us Shiver: A Monument of Memory and Might
The Brandenburg Gate, a majestic symbol of Berlin that over the years has shared tragic moments and explosions of joy with the German capital, has seen many a beautiful thing. There were once 18 gates in the city, but this is the only one to have survived, after having witnessed epochal changes that have redesigned modern Europe. A silent witness to hostility, deaths and hard conquests, the gate says more than words: it is impossible to admire it and not think of the tragedies that have overwhelmed Germany in the last century, of the Berlin Wall and its memorable fall.
Architecture and Historical Design
Located at the top of Unter den Linden, the avenue that divides the city in two, the Brandenburg Gate was built between 1778 and 1791, but the sculptures were completed in 1795. The model was that of the Athenian propylaea – grandiose porticoes that preceded the entrance to the temples or to the polis – and like the Parisian Arc de Triomphe it was meant to act as a triumphal threshold to the capital of Greater Prussia.
From Gate of Peace to Wartime Symbol
The first name, Gate of Peace, seems sarcastic if one thinks of the troubled destiny that awaited it: the period of parades and torchlight processions in honor of Nazi rule, desired by Hitler, but also the bombings of the Second World War and the desolation that reigned around the wall when Berlin was torn in two parts.
Cold War and Division
At that time the gate was immediately behind the border, in the Soviet part of the city, and the nearby Pariser Platz square was a no man’s land, inaccessible to civilians. On August 13, 1961, the border was completely closed: tanks and soldiers were lined up in front of the gate, and residents of the German Democratic Republic were expressly forbidden to cross the border with West Berlin.
Watchtowers and wall reinforcements soon appeared around the gate, and an information center for foreign visitors was set up in one part of it: the inhabitants of East Berlin, for the most part, knew nothing about the information center and the exhibition inside the Brandenburg Gate, which they had no access to in order to prevent them from fleeing to the Federal Republic of Germany.
The Fall of the Berlin Wall
In the winter of 1989, we know, the blockade gave way: it was no longer possible to contain the crowd that aspired to flow into West Berlin. It was the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The Brandenburg Gate was there, and it still evokes in the minds of passers-by the division of Germany and the joy of liberation, told, among other things, by a real exhibition in the Brandenburg Gate U-Bahn station.
Architectural Details and Symbolism
It is an imposing monument, proud and bitter at the same time, 26 meters high and 65 meters wide. Below it, between the massive Doric columns, 5 roads run, still watched over today by the pavilions that once served as guards and customs officers.
In the upper part of the architecture stands the entablature by Johann Gottfried Schadow, with bas-reliefs inspired by Greek mythology and the famous quadriga sculpted in 1794. Transported to Paris by Napoleon in 1807, it was brought back home in 1814 by the Prussians, who added the iron cross to the crown on the pole held by the goddess of peace.
Memorial to the Victims of the Holocaust
Next to the square in front of the gate, the Pariser Platz, stands the Memorial to the Victims of the Holocaust, built between 2003 and 2005 with over 2,700 concrete steles. Designed by architect Peter Eisenman, it includes an underground information center dedicated to the history of the victims and the extermination camps.
Useful Information
Information center: open Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 – 20:00 (last admission 19:15)
Memorial: open 24 hours a day
Free admission, donations welcome for the foundation
Contact details
Tel: +49 (0)30 26 39 43 36
Fax: +49 (0)30 26 39 43 21
Email: [email protected]
Getting there
Bus: lines 100, 123, 148, 200, M41, TXL
S-Bahn: Unter den Linden, Potsdamer Platz (lines S1, S2, S26)
U-Bahn: Potsdamer Platz and Mohrenstraße (line U2)
