E.What a roof represents is a question of perspective, at least a flat one. On the one hand, it is what makes a house a house in the first place, as part of its essence is to separate oneself from the outside on all sides. But it is also ground, surface, on which something can in turn arise. In cities there are roofs on which football is played, on which there are deckchairs, on which mini-houses have been lifted, which demonstratively make do with the space that is created as a by-product.
The charm of such places is their own life. They reduce the house on which they stand to the substructure that creates the new space. Berlin’s newest roof that can be walked on makes you almost forget that there is another castle in the middle of the city, because this is below it. 1500 square meters at a height of 30 meters, the most beautiful distance, you look at the city and everyday life with a distance and an overview, without being completely relieved from them. No wonder that a few years ago Angela Merkel declared the city to Emmanuel Macron up here. Opposite the cathedral and Museum Island, next door is the State Opera, over there the Humboldt University, there Alexanderplatz, and that, far back on the hill, was the listening station of the US Army. You can see the whole of Berlin from here. Only the most discussed new building in the city is gone.
Backward-looking idealization of Prussia, dismal functional building behind a pleasing baroque fantasy, lack of concept, looted art – was there anything? On the roof, the dome with the golden cross and the fatal inscription pushes into the picture, which only promises “salvation” to Christians in this world. But such claims to omnipotence will soon be put in their place up here, and the institutions represented in the Humboldt Forum want to distance themselves from the text on a board.
Otherwise there is only the sky, a long bench (as soon as the wood has been delivered) and, in a box-shaped structure, a restaurant that will also open in the evening. Earthy colors, potted plants, sixties balloon lamps. A bit of a lounge, a bit of a hotel foyer, the urban-hip variant. There was already a house on the roof in the early 1930s, there are a few photos: An elderly couple and a wooden arbor with climbing plants, to which a few steps lead. Sometimes the woman lies in a deck chair, sometimes she waters the flowers, sometimes the couple just stand next to each other and look into the distance. The man, Otto Schönfelder, had been the palace polisher at court. The two of them put their little luck on the roof for the splendor of the monarchy, which had already perished. The lock below them was nothing but a shell.
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