BERLIN (dpa) – Berlin’s impressive new Federal Chancellery building – Germany’s answer to Washington’s White House and Number 10 Downing Street in London – has at last been inaugurated.
The eight-storey building cost 465 million German marks (around 22l.5 million U.S. dollars) to construct and occupies a prominent position in the lush Tiergarten district.
The big surprise is that it will not only serve as Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s workplace – he’s been operating out of the ex- communist Council of State building on the Schlossplatz for the past 20 months – but also as his new “residence” in Berlin.
Schroeder is quitting a villa in the city’s southern Dahlem district and will move into a 200 square-metre-sized apartment provided for him on the top floor of the eight-storey, pillared Chancellery, directly above his new office.
Schroeder says combining both his workplace and home in the massive building is a matter of “practical convenience”.
The location is central, close to the Reichstag, Germany’s old-new seat of parliament and the “new” government quarter in Tiergarten district.
Schroeder shreds no tears about leaving his present office. For years it was the place where the late Erich Honecker ruled communist East Germany, Stalinist-style until he was ousted in 1989.
The view from his old office window, as Schroeder frequently grumbled, is the “ugliest in Berlin”, facing onto the communist-built Palace of the Republic, now just a hulk after lengthy asbestos removal surgery.
The contrast couldn’t be greater in his new quarters. Schroeder will have a spectacular view of Berlin, both east and west, from his new seventh-floor office.
Critics are divided about the architectural style of the new Chancellery, which is 335 metres long and has 370 offices, ample space for the 450 government officials soon to be working there.
For some the new Chancellery is “monumental”. Even Schroeder has called it “two sizes too big”. To others it’s a jewel of a building, studded with giant concrete pillars, undulating roofs and 13 pleasing glassed winter gardens.
Designed by German architects Axel Schultes and Charlotte Frank, it is an unmistakably futuristic-looking building – in stark contrast to the nearby Reichstag, even though it is topped with a gleaming Sir Norman Foster-designed glass dome.
The joke in Bonn used to be that the only thing remarkable about the architecture of the former Chancellery was the famous Henry Moore sculpture on the lawn. Critics said it had the look of a small town “Sparkasse” savings bank. That accusation cannot be levelled at the new Chancellery in Berlin.
A striking feature of the north and south facades are the large arched openings, starting just above the administration wings and extending up to the 8th floor.
An enormous concrete ceiling, which begins in the large foyer sweeps upwards, overcoming the height difference between the east and west wings of the building.
The south facade opens the view to the Reichstag and the Tiergarten, while to the north, the multimillion dollar Lehrter Bahnhof station – Berlin’s future central railway station – is now taking shape.
Asked about the size of the Chancellery, Andre Lundt, press spokesman of the company which built it, says: “The government felt it should be a kind of counterpart, but not a rival building, to the Reichstag.
“It could not be too small and was intended to have a certain clout with its presence.”
From Schroeder’s office the view takes in the entire new government quarter which has emerged around the Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate, as well as the Adlon Hotel and revitalized Potsdamer Platz.
Schroeder, who once remarked that the Chancellery seemed to have been designed more with the wishes of ex-Chanceller Helmut Kohl in mind that his own, insisted on having several art works installed in the building, pieces which more clearly reflect his working-class origin.
The building is surrounded for security reasons by a wall four metres high – taller than the former Berlin Wall – and members of Germany’s border police are on permanent duty. Should Schroeder need to leave in a hurry, the complex includes a helicopter pad.
