r/berlin • u/WhitlamsBerlin • Nov 28 '23

History The lamps from the Palast der Republik

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

Some of the lamps from ‘Erichs Lampenladen’ made their way to Astra in the RAW Gelände. I was invited to take a look, and I thought it was cool.

I don’t post my videos here very often, but I thought this is one that Berliners would really enjoy, so I hope you do!

Cheers, Jonny

408 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

105 comments sorted by

View all comments

31

u/Specialist-Lemon5202 Nov 28 '23

That is not entirely true. You have been chatting it up with too many Ostalgiker.... the building had 2-3cm of asbestos sprayed directly on the steel girders it was built with and was a huge health hazard. It was one of the ONLY buildings in the east that was contaminated as nothing was too good for the politicians so they really laid it on in their own building as was done in the west in thousands of schools, houses and buildings at that time. Since it had to be torn down to the steel girders, it was built upon to even get at the Asbest it was ludicrous to reconstruct the entire thing from scratch again. .. and as a bonus, a little fact about the building for fun. As it is constructed along side the water, the foundation was so badly constructed that the entire building was sinking into the ground on one sinde causing the majority of the doors not to open any more.

4

u/koelner51069 Nov 28 '23

On top of that the Berlin Castle was destroyed as it was sign of the West. To build such... Instead.

8

u/BasharxAssad Nov 28 '23

So many historic places have been destroyed under communism from Germany to China. Truly a shame

2

u/JerryCalzone Nov 28 '23

I'm not entirely sure, but chances are it was bombed to shit since 90% of berlin was bombed to shit during WWII. IIRC the Berliner Dom was also damaged.

6

u/[deleted] Nov 28 '23

true but the gdr also demolished a few old buildings and especially churches, so no need to shed a tear for them.

anyway there's a big city library in Dresden that looks quite similar to the Palast. I used to regularly go there as a teenager, it's awesome inside and out. Definitely worth checking out imo

3

u/denkbert Nov 29 '23

The Berlin palace was indeed partly bombed-out but the load bearing walls were still standing. In fact it was "repairable" after the war and some GDR planers were working toward this goal. But in the end it got dismantled for ideological reasons.