© 1995 Christo & Prestel Verlag

Interview with Christo

Interviewer: Masahiko Yanagi

Page 6 of 12

With friendly permission by Prestel Verlag

Drawing (two parts) 1992
Foto: Wolfgang Volz
Collection Jeanne-Claude Christo, New York

Yanagi:

To realize this project, from whom do you have to obtain permission? Who has the right to make the final decision?

It is very intricate. Twenty-eight meters of the East facade of the Reichstag are in the Soviet air rights sector, but the upkeep of the building is done by the West German government. It is almost like an extension in Berlin of the Parliament of Bonn. This is why all the money for the expenses of the Reichstag is given by Bonn, not by the city of Berlin. Juridically the person responsible, the landlord for the Reichstag, is the President of the Bundestag in Bonn, the Parliament of the German Federal Republic, who in the American sense would be something like the Vice President or the Speaker of the House. He is the second person in the political structure in West Germany. First there is the President of Germany, then the President of the Bundestag, and third the Chancellor. The President of the Bundestag is the only one who can give the final pemission because the Reichstag is mostly in West Berlin. That is the so-called "official way", but because the Reichstag is located in the British military sector, the West German government is obliged to ask the point of view of the British who automatically pull together the French and the Americans to discuss the okay or refusal. Being also in divided Berlin the British, Americans and the French are obliged to inform, or discuss the East facade of the building with the Soviet army headquarters in East Berlin, and of course, the Soviets will be obliged on the other hand to discuss the matter with the East German government, whose capital is East Berlin. Now this is how the thing is done.

Collage (two parts) 1992
Foto: Wolfgang Volz
Collection Jeanne-Claude Christo, New York

Yanagi:

In order to obtain permission, you've been talking to many politicians of foreign governments. Do you ever receive any assistance from the United States government in negotiating with foreign governments?

Certainly for the project in Berlin, we tried, at a difficult moment, to get some help from Washington. This was our naive idea which did not work very well. In the summer of 1977 we had the first official refusal for the Reichstag project, and I was terribly disappointed. The Running Fence was completed, Carter had been elected, and at an exhibition which I had in Washington at the Corcoran Gallery, I asked Mrs. Mondale, who is a friend of the arts, if Vice-President Mondale could provide help for the project. But, ultimately we discovered many months later that it did not help anything. Then we understood that Germany is a financial giant, but is often called a political midget; Germany is not officially recognized as a world power, like England or France, in political negotiations. By being so powerful economically, Germany has an incredible influence over eastern European countries and the Soviet Union because it is the biggest funnel of hard currency to the Soviet bloc. West Germany uses Polish, Hungarian or Czechoslovakian workers in the same way America uses Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand: for cheap labor. All that makes the leverage of the West German industrialists extremely important. Instead of going to Washington for help it is much better to have the support of West German financiers, businessmen and industrialists because of their strong influence on the East bloc. This is why in 1978 we created the Kuratorium für Christos Projekt Reichstag (Board for Christo's Reichstag project) in Hamburg, made up of thirteen leading West German citizens from all kinds of fields, lawyers, businessmen, scientists, industrialists and bankers, to help us to translate my idea to Bonn and to the Soviet bloc. They really do our work to bring about the understanding that will lead to getting the permit. Also, in the mid-'70s when things were going badly, just before the refusal, we tried to go to the chief of the American mission in Berlin, who is a civilian, and to the French and the British, to ask them to give some opinion or make some statement to influence or encourage the West German government to give permission. Unfortunately, the Americans, the British and the French refused to make any statement. They said that they would await the decision in Bonn, and after that they would give their opinion in a statement. We learned later that the Allied forces would go along with anything the West German government said. That was our problem, not to have understood that to build favorable support we should have worked with these people simultaneously, before approaching negotiations. Really that was the biggest mistake.

Although the Reichstag is physically located in Berlin, permission can come only from Bonn. Does this mean that people in Berlin have very little influence on the decision to allow the project ?

The city of Berlin is not only a city, it is also a state. The German Federal Republic is a federation of states, such as the state of Bavaria. The mayor of Berlin is like a governor, with his own ministers. It creates a very unusual situation because Berlin, as a city-state, has direct power, just like all the different federal states represented in Bonn. It is also obvious that since Berlin is the former capital of Germany, the lordship or mayoralty of Berlin is often a stepping stone to the Chancellory; the mayor is always aspiring to become Chancellor or President. Therefore the point of view of the mayor towards my proposition is very important. We knew that from the beginning, even before we ever went to Bonn, and we tried to have the mayors of Berlin, all five in succession, on our side. We are unusually optimistic now because since February of 1986, for the first time, we have the majority of the Senators in favor of the project (the mayor of Berlin has several senators, for industry, finance, arts, building, police, etc.). We never before had so great a majority and the mayor himself. This is why we are very confident that the decision of the Berlin Senate to support the project will be significant to Bonn. In that way we can make Bonn think much more seriously about our proposition. Also, I should mention that right now there is a group of German people, most of them without relation to us, who are organizing a committee in Berlin: Berliner f’r den Reichstag. They are collecting signatures, they have tables in the airport, the banks and in the streets, and they hope to collect half-a-million signatures in Berlin by the end of the year. They are young people and students and businesspeople, all kinds. This is part of the push that the people who are for the project would like to make just before the final decision.

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© 1995 Christo & Prestel Verlag