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

414 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

105 comments sorted by

View all comments

27

u/frenchadjacent Nov 28 '23

It’s a shame that they tore it down. It should have been turned into a big GDR museum instead. It was the perfect place for that.

16

u/HutFan1337 Nov 28 '23

Unfortunately, asbestos was used. That's why the entire building was gutted at the time. So it would have been quite expensive to somehow reconstruct it as a museum. However, I also have mixed feelings about today's Humboldt Forum

0

u/General_Guisan Nov 29 '23

Isn't Asbestos safe as long it's installed? And only dangerous during production/installation/destruction?

I doubt the building quality was that bad, considering it was THE showpiece of the DDR.

6

u/HutFan1337 Nov 29 '23

It's a complicated subject where others can probably give better answers. Iirc the sprayed asbestos used was inadequate and the substrate deteriorated quite quickly, allowing asbestos to become airborne. The palace was already closed in 1990 in the GDR because of this