The German people

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Gable with the inscription on the Reichstag building
Detail of the inscription

The German people (original spelling in capital letters ) reads the 16 meter wide inscription on the architrave above the west portal of the Reichstag building in Berlin. The 60 centimeter high letters made from melted cannons in a specially designed font by Peter Behrens were added after disputes about the content of the building's dedication in 1916.

History of the inscription

The Reichstag around 1900
- still without an inscription
Kladderadatsch magazine
from September 12, 1915
The damaged Reichstag, 1945

The architect Paul Wallot had specified the gable inscription Dem deutscher Volke as a dedication to the Reichstag building designed by him and completed in 1894, which sparked a debate in parliament and the press. The Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger called the plan on December 11, 1894 “naive, almost comical”, because the owner of the house was “the German people who were the builders”. Rainer Haubrich remarks from a distance that it is “not usual” for the builder to dedicate a dedication to the client. According to the political scientist Klaus von Beyme , Kaiser Wilhelm II rejected the phrase because it honored popular sovereignty . A number of counter-ideas have been put forward; the Reichstag building commission proposed "The German Empire", Wilhelm II. "The German Unity". The art historian Bernd Roeck is of the opinion that Wilhelm's proposal is the motto for a building that should "tame, discipline, at least integrate". On December 12, 1894, the MP Friedrich von Payer brought up the subject of the inscription in a speech in the Reichstag and criticized the fact that its lack of it was not conducive to unity. He suspected that the absence could be due to the sensitivities of the Bundesrat and amusedly suggested the inscription “The German people and their noble Bundesrat”. The newspapers took up the subject too; the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger mockingly suggested "The German Press"; others called “The German people are forbidden to enter”, Ernst von Wologene “I stand firmly fixed in stone, now look ghost how you come in”.

The place provided by Wallot for the slogan remained empty for more than 20 years, which Bernd Roeck described as a sign of "unclear identity" and therefore sees the Reichstag at that time as an "emblem without a motto". For the historian Heiko Bollmeyer, such an inscription would have opened up the possibility of "developing an independent and individual parliamentary self-image". Until the beginning of the First World War in 1914, the journalistic debate persisted with various proposals for the inscription and varying degrees of intensity. In 1915, the Undersecretary of State in the Reich Chancellery , Arnold Wahnschaffe , raised the question again in a letter to the head of the civil cabinet , Rudolf von Valentini . Wahnschaffe expressed concern that the Kaiser would lose popular support with every further day of the war; by adding the inscription he could do something about this loss of loyalty. Wilhelm II replied that he would by no means give express permission, but should the Reichstag Decoration Commission decide to add the inscription, he would have no objections. A day later, the President of the Reichstag, Johannes Kaempf , announced the decision to commission the inscription.

In the political- satirical magazine Kladderadatsch , before the affixing in September 1915, one could read:

"And it stayed a long time without an inscription -
the German came along in field gray ,
He spoke the words in a wide-sounding and heavy manner
And - inscribed them with the sword."

There was also a dispute about the font of the inscription: While some pleaded for a classic Capitalis , others wanted to see the "German script" Fraktur at the German Reichstag . The stationery manufacturer Friedrich Soennecken spread his opinion about the correct font in a brochure. The Interior Secretary Theodor Lewald finally commissioned the architect and typographer Peter Behrens . As a compromise, together with Anna Simons, he created “nothing less than an all-German national script ”, as the historian Peter Rück wrote in 1993, in the form of a “capital, uncial , fracture , bastarda ”:

"With a stroke between an inclined broad nib and flat brush, she modified the basic forms of the classic uncials (E, U, T) by spurs on the left shaft feet in M, H, N and K and refraction of the right in M, U, H, N, Buckling of the upper arch profile of E, M, S, C and serification of the shaft approaches in U, H, K and L by stretching the curves (D) and rounding the straight lines (V) and the inscription in a vitalistic, flaming counterpoint to geometric architecture. "

Two cannons captured from the Wars of Liberation against France in 1813–1815 were melted down to produce the 60 cm high letters. The bronze foundry Loevy , a Jewish family company , was responsible for the execution . An exhibition of the Jewish Museum Berlin under the title "Dem deutscher Volke" from March 21 to July 15, 2003 dealt with the history of the bronze caster Loevy.

The inscription was applied from December 20 to 24, 1916, “without much media interest”. Bernd Roeck speaks of a "careless, incidentally granted gesture" that remained "irrelevant" in view of the World War.

The inscription, which was damaged in the Second World War , was restored during the reconstruction and renewed during the renovation of the building in 1994–1999.

Interpretations and reception

The inscription is usually added as “(This Parliament is) to the German people (dedicated)” or “(The work of the politicians is) to the German people (dedicated)”. Two Swiss politicians, Tim Guldimann and Moritz Leuenberger , described the inscription in the 2010s as an expression of a different understanding of the people as sovereign in Germany compared to Switzerland, in which the state people would not be treated as a " dative object " but would act themselves.

In 2000, the project artist Hans Haacke created the work of art The population in the atrium of the Reichstag, which is written in the letters on the gable, examining and distinguishing it from the gable inscription . Haacke gave the reason that the old Reichstag inscription was "historically burdened" and that almost ten percent of the residents of the Federal Republic were not German citizens. The members of the Bundestag are “morally responsible” to them. The word combination “German people” implies a “mythical, exclusive tribal unit” and is “associated with a radically undemocratic understanding of the res publica”. This “popular term suggesting a blood community” still causes “mischief”.

In recent times the inscription has been used several times for political climbing activities. In April 2007 activists covered the gable inscription with a similarly designed banner “The German Economy” in order to demonstrate against lobbyism and capitalism . In September 2009, Greenpeace activists added the inscription “To the German people” with the banner “A future without nuclear power”. On July 3, 2020 they repeated the action with the slogan "a future without coal power" to protest against the coal phase-out law.

literature

Web links

Commons : Reichstag building from the west  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Julia Klee: Political Art in the Reichstag. P. 26 , fn. 13.
  2. ^ Rainer Haubrich : To the German people. The Reichstag building and other capital city architectures. In: Die Welt , July 24, 1999.
  3. ↑ Klaus von Beyme: Cultural policy and national identity: studies on cultural policy between state control and social autonomy. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen, Wiesbaden 1998, p. 241 .
  4. ↑ a b Peter Rück: The language of writing. On the history of the Fraktur ban of 1941. In: Jürgen Baurmann, Hartmut Günther, Ulrich Knoop (Eds.): Homo scribens. Perspectives on literacy research. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1993, ISBN 3-484-31134-7 , pp. 231-272, here p. 245.
  5. ↑ a b c d Bernd Roeck: The Reichstag. In: Étienne François , Hagen Schulze (Ed.): German places of memory . Vol. 1. Beck, Munich 2001, pp. 138–155, here p. 149 .
  6. ↑ Michael S. Cullen: The Reichstag. Symbol of German history. be.bra, Berlin 2015, p. 58 (e-book) .
  7. ↑ a b Heiko Bollmeyer: The stony road to democracy. The Weimar National Assembly between the Empire and the Republic (=  historical political research. Vol. 13). Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 57 .
  8. ^ Michael S. Cullen: The Reichstag building. An overview of the building history. In: Ansgar Klein, Ingo Braun, Christiane Schroeder, Kai-Uwe Hellmann (eds.): Art, symbolism and politics: The wrapping of the Reichstag as food for thought. Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1995, pp. 231-246, here p. 244 ( E-Text ).
  9. ^ Michael S. Cullen: The Reichstag building. An overview of the building history. In: Ansgar Klein, Ingo Braun, Christiane Schroeder, Kai-Uwe Hellmann (eds.): Art, symbolism and politics: The wrapping of the Reichstag as food for thought. Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1995, pp. 231-246, here p. 243 ; Michael S. Cullen: The Reichstag. Symbol of German history. be.bra, Berlin 2015, p. 62 (e-book) .
  10. ↑ Peter Rück : The language of writing. On the history of the Fraktur ban of 1941. In: Jürgen Baurmann, Hartmut Günther, Ulrich Knoop (Eds.): Homo scribens. Perspectives on literacy research. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1993, ISBN 3-484-31134-7 , pp. 231-272, here p. 246.
  11. ^ Website of the exhibition curator .
  12. ^ Tim Guldimann, Christoph Reichmuth, José Ribeaud: Aufbruch Schweiz! Back to our strengths. A conversation. Nagel & Kimche, Munich 2015, p. 102 ; Occurs Moritz Leuenberger in the program Dear democracy , SRF / SWR February 27, Original / 2. March 2013.
  13. ↑ Hans Haacke: "OF THE BEVÖLKERUNG". In: Bundestag.de ; Michael Diers , Kaspar König (ed.): "The population". Essays and documents on the debate about the Reichstag project by Hans Haacke. König, Cologne 2000.
  14. ↑ Vera Stahl: Hans Haacke: "The Reichstag is an imperial palace". In: Spiegel Online , September 12, 2000.
  15. ↑ Who does the people belong to? A conversation with Hans Haacke by Matthias Flügge and Michael Freitag. In: new visual arts. Vol. 9, 1999, No. 7, pp. 22-24, ISSN  0941-6501 .
  16. ↑ Protest in the Bundestag: demonstrators climb MPs on the roof . In: Süddeutsche.de , April 27, 2007.
  17. ↑ Michael Behrendt: Security margin - Greenpeace enters the Reichstag. In: Berliner Morgenpost , September 1, 2009.
  18. ↑ RBB24: Greenpeace activists climb the Berlin Reichstag , July 3, 2020.