Mrs. Speaker! Dear colleagues!
The question is asked of us the members of the German Parliament if we
want to consent to the plan to wrap the Reichstag in Berlin with 100,000
sq.m. of material. We have to decide on this question today. We will not be
helped further in this decision , this has already been said , by artistic
criteria. This is not a decision on art. It cannot and should not be. None of us
wants to presume to decide if Christo's plan is artistically meaningful or not.
Christo himself said last year that he would not become involved in
academic debates on the question of what art is. For him, it has to do with
the social and political elements of his work. These have to be the decisive
aspects for us as well.
That is why it does not have to do with the question if some are more open
to art than others and more open to that which produces with art and can
also be provokingly produced. One should question the sensibility and
decision-making capability of the Reichstag wrapping critics and opponents
no more than the supporters of the plan.
At any rate, no one need accept the charge of being ignorant.
I for my part have great respect for the work and creations of Christo.
His project art seems to me to be of a higher Ä not only aesthetic Ä effect
and it teaches us to look at a lot of things with other eyes. His work has also
impressed me, whether it was the islands in Florida surrounded by pink
plastic panels, the umbrella landscapes in Japan or California, the enormous
curtain right across a canyon in Colorado or finally, the Pont Neuf Bridge in
Paris wrapped in sand-colored synthetic material.
But dear colleagues, the Reichstag is definitely not the Pont Neuf.
The Reichstag is a towering political symbol of recent German history,
a symbol which unlike no other represents the highs and lows of our history.
The vicissitudes, the painful changes have left their direct traces on the
building. The Reichstag in Berlin is stone evidence of German fate in this
century.
Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed the first constitutional German Republic
from one of its balconies in 1918. In February 1933 the Reichstag fire
delivered the National Socialists a pretext to erect their barbaric dictatorship
with the Enabling Act. Twelve years later two Red Army soldiers hoisted
the Soviet flag onto its roof as sign of the destruction of the Third Reich.
We the German Parliament have expressed our adherence to the goal of of
unity in peace and freedom and in the affiliation of free Berlin to the Federal
Republic of Germany during the separation of Germany and Berlin with our
presence in the Reichstag.
Behind the the eastern facade of the Reichstag, the Wall of disgrace
extended for almost 20 [Schäuble is mistaken, he means almost 30] years
which divided Berlin, Germany and Europe. On the night of October 2nd to
3rd 1990 we ceremoniously commemorated the reunification of our
fatherland in front of the western facade.
We Germans do not possess many symbols which make German history
so lively with similar drama and similar impetus. The Reichstag is thus the
most meaningful building and the one with the most symbolic gravity in
Germany. We should handle such a symbol conscientiously!
No.
Dear colleagues, I believe that you have maybe considered too slightly
how many of our fellow citizens have difficulty understanding the debate
and every conceivable decision.
We should take the trouble to express our arguments clearly.
(Peter Conradi [SPD]: Mr. Schäuble, who brought this debate
into plenum? You of course!
- Colleague Conradi, you opened the debate with the request that we
should we exchange our arguments calmly.
I suggest that you should follow your own advice for forty-five minutes.
Christo himself gladly advertises for his own projects with the indication
that they hardly allow their effect on people to be estimated before-hand,
that one must first see the concrete results before him. These are
experiments and there is otherwise nothing there to object to. But dear
colleagues, since the Reichstag isn't any old building, we shouldn't perform
experiments with it.
It has also been said that Christo has been working hard on this
project for 20 years. With all due respect: The arbitrariness
with which the arguments expressed for this project during this 20
years vary irritate me.
At first it was said that the Reichstag was a symbol of the Third Reich -
which is historically quite incorrect - its wrapping sorted itself into the
efforts to work off the national socialist past in Germany.
- I did not actually say that Christo said that, arguments were also
expressed by others.
It was then said that the wrapping project aimed at a special drama which
bound itself to the location of the Reichstag in the shadow of the Wall. The
Reichstag would be raised into conciousness as a symbol of divsion by the
wrapping. , Now, after the end of the East-West conflict, it supposedly less
concerns the wrapping as the unwrapping. Now it concerns the Reichstag as
a symbol of the new beginning in united Germany.
Frank Schirrmacher wrote in the "FAZ" in the last days that
all arguments brought forward for the wrapping project had the ring of
something studied. The wrapping project is in the last analysis
simply an end in itself.
Why exactly the Reichstag? In no other country has there been the
consideration up to now to have a building of comparable meaning become
the theme of such a project. Parliament buildings in other countries also
express history, but the proprietors of the Palace of Westminster, Capitol
Hill or the Palais Bourbon would never seriously entertain the idea of a
wrapping.
- Because it hasn't happened. - Is the understanding of political style,
political dignity and political really more solid in these countries than here?
Anyway, they know in other democracies about the dignity which is and
must be inherent in buildings of tradition in a constitutional democracy. We
Germans have difficulties with symbols which express our history and
considering the breaches and violations, this is only too understandable. But
just for that reason, we should be wary.
Our representative democracy, its institutions, also its representatives
currently have too little as opposed to too much confidence and because
such deficits exist, they must be reduced. We should not lead anyone into
temptation or offer him the opportunity to use such deficits in order to
weaken our constitutional democracy.
(Applause from the CDU/CSU and the F.D.P. MPs -
Peter Reuschenbach [SPD]: You certainly had a broad field there in your
policy)
The people in our country must endure many changes and uncertainties
today. They have to carry burdens of economic structural change, they have
to accept cuts to which they have not been accustomed during the 40 years
of prosperity and social security. They are faced with new and additional
dangers to their security from within as well as from without, and in this
situation we must strengthen the inner solidarity of our constitutional
state community. We must once again make sure of the basis of our
community, our foundation of common values and also our national identity.
We need this solidarity as a clamp for the strengths which also move away
from another instead of coming together in view of distribution margins
which are becoming more narrow.
We have to remember that the state is neither held together by a system of
perfected legal norms nor by a system of perfected social benefits but above
all by institutions in which the fundamental norms find expression.
We must remember that these institutions must remain stable and capable of
integration if this community should have a good future.
(Applause from the CDU/CSU and F.D.P. MPs -
Peter W. Reuschenbach [SPD]: What is this supposed to have to do with the
work, Dear Mr. Schäuble?)
And this also concerns buildings which accomodate these institutions.
The image of this building is stamped in the people's minds. And thus these
buildings embody these institutions; they represent themselves outwardly. In
order that they are able to represent themselves believably, we should not
perform any experiments on their outer appearance.
Thus a building such as the Reichstag is a political symbol.
Historic
experiences of a people are concentrated as in a burning glasss. There are
suspended poles, axes around which those elements for and against the
political strengths revolve for decades. In this respect, they also tie together
a people and precisely in conflicts of interest, goals and assurances. The
inner unity of a people can be embodied in such symbols. The entire state
community should be able to find itself again in such symbols.
This dear colleagues is the reason - not humorlessness, intolerance or
lack of respect for artistic freedom - why one grants national symbols
careful respect elsewhere in the world, why one can in general hardly gain
from one's alienation.
It has also been said that the packing of the Reichstag would document the
ironic relationship of Germans to their history.
I have already said that we
Germans have difficulty with our history with respect to all of the upheavals
and wounds, with respect to the hot-cold treatments of peaks and defeats
precisely in the last 150 years. This is why I would want to avoid any
appearance of irony - and even if it is only a misunderstanding - in
association with our history.
National symbols, symbols in general,
should do one thing, they should
bring together. A wrapping of the Reichstag - Burkhard Hirsch said it -
would not do that one thing, not bring together, it would polarize.
So many people would not be able to accept it and to understand it.
So many people would not be able to understand this association with a
building which had such an unusual meaning for German
parliamentarianism in German history. We already have enough things
which rather separate us Germans,
and too few things which bring us together. We should not allow ourselves
to leave behind too many people virtually on the wayside, who cannot
understand and cannot fathom such an undertaking.
http://www.kulturbox.de/christo/bundestg/brede07e.htm (Einblicke ins Internet, 10/1995)
