The path to implementation

The realisation of the freedom and unity monument was a long process. Construction began on Berlin’s Schlossfreiheit after the second competition for a monument design produced a winner in “Citizens on the move“.

However, the site contained a number of hurdles. These included finding historic mosaics but also the discovery of a rare species of bat which lived in the base of the former monument. Added to these were questions about how to handle the protected arch and how to include wheelchair access to the future monument. The search for solutions repeatedly delayed the construction process. Due to an anticipated explosion in costs of more than 50 percent, the German Reichstag’s budget committee resolved not to pursue the project further on 13th April 2016.

Despite the project being put on ice, the Deutsche Gesellschaft e. V. continued to pursue the idea, which also continued to be debated within parliament. Bundestag Vice-President Wolfgang Thierse strongly criticised the resolution: “I consider it to be a document of the unwillingness and inability of we Germans to remember our own history self-confidently, perhaps even proudly, to envision a happy event of our history in a monument. […] a reminder which certainly was not intended to supplant and cause us to forget the contradictions, failures, shameful deeds and crimes of German history.”

At the end of September 2016, Bundestag president Norbert Lammert pointed out to the Council of Elders the fact that the budget committee’s resolution could not abrogate the original plenary resolution. Accordingly, he called on the parliamentary groups to “think about how to proceed”.

In the ensuing period, the debate, in which the reconstruction of the colonnades on the base of the Kaiser Wilhelm monument was in discussion, took a number of twists and turns. The decision against rebuilding the old and for erecting a new monument was taken on 30th May 2017. The Bundestag decided on the erection of the freedom and unity monument on the basis of resolutions from 2007 and 2008. The joint motion of the CDU/CSU and the SPD stated: “With the freedom and unity monument, the aim remains to create a positive site of remembrance for the Peaceful Revolution of 1989 and Reunification in order to remind us of the happiest moments of our recent German history.”