METERED OUT: BERLIN'S REICHSTAG BUILDING OPENS

Today in Berlin: 5 December 1894

If you are still unsure as to what to do on this Friday evening, may I suggest a quick trip to 1894?

With a little of luck and parameters tweaking, you might still catch the moment, when on this very day, after 12 years of planning and construction, the keystone (or Schlussstein) was laid down in the magnificent Kuppelhalle of the brand-new Reichstag building. In the presence of Kaiser Wilhelm Zwo (“the second” or how Berliners referred to Kaiser Wilhelm II).

For whom, famously, this would be one of only two occasions on which he would ever grace the parliamentary building with his imperial presence. Another eight years will have to pass before S.M. (Seine Majestät) enters the Reichstag again. On April 5, 1906 when Chancellor von Bülow passed out during his political opponent’s speech.

View from the Reichstag roof over Germania’s shoulder and towards Königsplatz (now Platz der Republik) and Krolloper, in the late 1920s. Image in public domain.

Prussian parliamentarians possibly did not miss Wilhelm much. Not after he had described their new seat as “the pinnacle of tastelessness” and “a completely failed creation” and then doubled down by referring to it as “Reichsaffenhaus” (Imperial Ape House).

His distaste, apart from the obvious threat that any parliamentary power posed to his allegedly God-given infallible status, might or might not have been caused by a problem as old as the world: the Reichstag had a bigger one.

Their cupola, made of glass-and-steel and after a long series of corrections and adjustments finally placed right over the main assembly hall, reached 75 metres above the ground.

However, the cupola on the royal Stadtschloß went up only 67 metres...

By the way - in case you were wondering and I do feel you might have been - the Reichstag was built using over 32 million bricks. That next pub quiz victory is yours;-)

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