Claudia Roth finds it “astonishing and historically blind” to consider the quotations from the Bible on the Berlin Palace “simply” for an “apolitical sign of religiosity”. There could still be a lot to come.
The eternal stumbling block: the Berlin Palace and in particular its dome with quotations from the Bible and a cross.
What would cultural Berlin have to discuss in the last twenty years if it weren’t for the Berlin Palace? The “capital metropolis” would have sunk into quiet insignificance long ago. Some call it democracy when you somehow live with a political decision at some point, even if there are good reasons to view the subject critically. As far as the reconstruction of the Berlin palace facade is concerned, there has been an unwillingness to accept the majority Bundestag decision for two decades – incidentally, it came about under the red-green Schröder-Fischer government.
Munich or Cologne would have beamed happily at the inauguration. But Berlin? That’s where Posemuckel lives, the Prussian counterpart to Seldwyla, who always develops beautifully when Berlin is planning something particularly big. Because the Berlin mentality, carefully cultivated in the midst of Brandenburg’s litter box, flourishes in nagging, not in the love of life.
Where baroque is too baroque
Posemuckel asks, isn’t this facade, designed by the great master builders of German Baroque like Schlueter or Eosander, a little too baroque? Or is the cross on the dome, under which the royal house chapel once lay, too dominantly Christian? And wouldn’t the address “Nelson-Mandela-Platz” be more appropriate than a “Schlossplatz” with a feudal touch, if only because of the need to come to terms with the colonial past?
The fact that one inscribes the foreseeable contradictions that generation after generation will have to live with in the reconstruction of historical facades may apply to others, but obviously not to Berliners.
Now Germany’s top guardian of culture, Claudia Roth (Greens), has discovered the earth-shattering problem in the piles of paper left behind in her office for cultural affairs in the Chancellery, according to which the inscriptions by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV for the cupola inscription (under the cross and above the palace chapel below) were being put together Quotations from the Bible represent an allegedly political message. They would underpin “the Prussian king’s claim to power derived solely from God”.
Fade with neon lettering
The philosopher and evangelical theologian Richard Schröder wrote the dome inscription («It is in no other salvation [. . .] for in the name of Jesus, to the glory of God the Father. That in the name of Jesus all knees should bow, which are in heaven and on earth and under the earth») summarized in their problem at this point as follows: If Friedrich Wilhelm IV had wanted to question the constitution, others would have Bible texts better recommended for this.
According to Claudia Roth, works of art will soon be dialectically superimposed on the inscription on the dome in the evening with neon letters. You can do that. On the one hand, one can be curious about the slogans that Claudia Roth will foist on the people here. On the other hand, we ask ourselves when the historically sensitive Minister of State for Culture will realize that German ministries are located in all the large Nazi buildings in historically burdened Berlin. Can we look forward to a Berlin filled with brightly colored art in the near future?
Claudia Roth thinks it is “amazing and historically blind” to consider the quotations from the Bible “simply” an “apolitical sign of religiosity”. But where does the Prussian king still live today, who could abuse his office thanks to this inscription?
Instead, some politicians apparently see themselves as a direct connection to God, wanting to subject and adapt everything and everyone to their own worldview. Just as if one’s own identity-political thinking was made for eternal values.