On the Way to the Humboldt-Forum

Parade Square and Wasteland

The May Demonstration on May 1, 1950, seemed to give the former site of the Palace a vital new function. Back then, political demonstrations were considered to be the highest expression of political culture. They also served as a crucial form of legitimisation for the young German Democratic Republic (GDR). However, as a location for parades and marches, Marx-Engels Square was the centre of interest no more than twice a year. The rest of the time it remained bleak and deserted - at the most it was used as a parking lot.

In 1957, the West German Bundestag (federal parliament) and the West Berlin Senate announced an urban planning competition entitled "Hauptstadt Berlin" (Capital Berlin), which took into consideration the entire Berlin centre, including the parts of the city that lay under East German administration. The GDR responded with its own competition "for the socialist transformation of the centre of the Capital of the GDR, Berlin."

The ideology and outcome of these competitions showed that urban planners in the 1950s in both East and West were willing to abandon the historical city centre. None of the entries envisaged the reconstruction of the Palace. Differences were identified only in the varying uses of the area: the East focussed on the construction of a dominant government building on the site of the former Palace, while most of the entries to the West Berlin competition sought to build cultural institutions there. The winners of the West German competition, Spengelin, Eggeling and Pempelfort, for example, envisaged the construction of an Academy of the Arts and an Academy of the Sciences.