Inside the Reichstag an infoboard states that three seminal photographs of 20th century Germany with the Reichstag as a backdrop all have one other thing in common- they have all been manipulated.
The first photo shows Philipp Scheidemann proclaiming the end of the monarchy and birth of the Republic on November 9, 1918 by a window of the Reichstag; I'm standing beside a copy at the Ingolstadt Army Museum. Whilst on November 9, 1918 Scheidemann did appear at a window or balcony on the west front of the Reichstag and delivered a short proclamation to the crowd below, the only contemporary photograph of that moment was taken by amateur photographer Erich Greiser showing Scheidemann as a small, poorly defined figure on the building, with the crowd in the foreground. The technical quality is low; the image is underexposed, slightly blurred, and Scheidemann’s features are barely distinguishable. Because the clear, detailed photograph that most publications used was created after the event as a deliberate reconstruction, historians and photographic specialists regard it as inauthentic for the day itself. The photo was first published in the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung on November 24, 1918, fifteen days later, and not on the front page but rather on page 4 in a fairly large format (11 x 15.5 cm). The original exposed negative is now lost. A contact print, considered an original and measuring a rather small 3.8 x 5.5 cm, is in the Ullstein photographic collection, whose publishing house included the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung. Regardless, in reality no-one would have been in a position to have heard anything he said. Later that afternoon Karl Liebknecht from the communist Spartakusbund called out the socialist Soviet republic from the palace although this webpage from the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung argues vehemently that the image is in fact a real representation of the event.
The second photo shown here of the Reichstag fire, and my 2022 Bavarian International School cohort was manipulated to appear that the fire had been more widespread and devastating than it actually was, limited mainly to the central council chamber. Taken on the morning of February 28, 1933 it showed the building after the fire had been brought under control; contemporary police reports state that the blaze was contained by approximately 00.25. By daylight only light residual smoke remained above the cupola. The image first appeared in print on the same day, February 28, 1933, on the front page of the B.Z. am Mittag. In that initial publication it was printed unretouched, paired with a night-time view of the burning building under the caption “Brennend und ausgebrannt.- Nachts und morgens vor dem Reichstag.” The morning photograph therefore entered public circulation showing only smoke. At some point after this first newspaper appearance the image was retouched whereby flames were painted into the cupola and the smoke was intensified so that the print appeared to show the building still burning. The alteration was performed by an unidentified retoucher, most likely working for a picture agency that sought a more dramatic version for subsequent sale. The retouched form, rather than the original morning photograph, became the version most frequently reproduced in later publications. 
The third fake photo highlighted shows the iconic raising of the Soviet flag which had been altered to remove the extra watch worn by the soldier as it appeared to confirm the systematic stealing of watches from Berliners. In the original negative of Yevgeny Khaldei’s photograph of the Soviet flag being raised on the Reichstag, the soldier supporting the flag-bearer, Senior Sergeant Abdulkhakim Ismailov, wears a wristwatch on each wrist. The presence of two watches was immediately recognised by Soviet editors as visually compromising as it suggested that the soldier had taken at least one of the watches as loot from the civilian population of Berlin, an act that official Soviet accounts of the battle preferred to suppress. When the negative reached Moscow, the editor-in-chief of the magazine Ogonyok instructed Khaldei to remove the second watch. Khaldei complied by retouching the print with a needle, carefully obliterating the watch on Ismailov’s right wrist so that only one remained visible. The alteration was performed on the photographic print itself rather than on the original negative, leaving the unaltered version intact in the photographer’s archive. The same retouching session also intensified the contrast of the image and introduced additional smoke into the background, taken from another frame on the same roll of film, in order to heighten the dramatic effect. The version published in Ogonyok and subsequently circulated worldwide is therefore the altered print: the second watch has been eliminated and the sky darkened with superimposed smoke. The original negative, which still shows the two watches, wasn't released at the time and only became widely known decades later through comparison of the two states of the image. The original photo (top) was altered (bottom) by editing the watch on the soldier's right wrist.
My 2016 class in front of the Reichstag, Germany's parliament in Berlin. The name together with its monumental size make most people associate Germany's neoclassical parliamentary building with the Nazis, but Hitler and his party have little history here. After hosting parliamentary sessions since 1894, one month after Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933, it was set on fire by Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe. In the years during which it abutted the Wall as a conference centre, West Berliners played football on its lawn, whilst later artist Christo famously wrapped it in cloth. It did not serve as parliament again until a reunited German government returned to Berlin in 1999. Renovated by Sir Norman Foster, this building is perhaps the most public federal building in the world through its glass-dome tourist attraction. On the rooftop, photographs documenting the building's history circle the rim above the parliament chamber. Two ramps spiral up the side of the dome, an engineering feat even more fascinating than the panoramic view from the top..gif)
The burning of the Reichstag led to the so-called Reichstag Fire Decree, the Enabling Act and ultimately Hitler’s rise to power, giving rise to the question of who was responsible for this crime. On March 23, 1933, the German Reichstag passed the Enabling Bill banning the German Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party from taking part in future election campaigns. This was followed by Nazi officials being put in charge of all local government in the provinces (7th April), trades unions being abolished, their funds taken and their leaders put in prison (2nd May), and a law passed making the Nazi Party the only legal political party in Germany (14th July). There are three main arguments, which are debated until today; these include the involvement of the Nazis, the sole guilt of Marinus van der Lubbe and whether or whether not the crime had been a communist plot. Nazi involvement in the Reichstag Fire is supported by the fact that the Nazis built an underground passage to the Reichstag in which storm troopers dispersed “gasoline and self-igniting chemicals” on the night of the arson under the order of the S.A leader Karl Ernst. Even though the locksmith Wingurth declared that the tunnel into the Reichstag had many locked doors, which where found to be closed after the fire, one must know that the Nazis have asked him to advocate their innocence at the Nuremberg Trials. Even the official of the Prussian Ministry testified at the Nuremberg trials that Goebbels had the initial idea of burning down the Reichstag. Additionally General Franz Halder witnessed Goering shouting "The only one who really knows about the Reichstag is I, because I set it on fire!" However Goering denied his participation in the Fire at the Nuremberg Trials. It seems most reasonable blaming the Nazis for the burning of the Reichstag as according to Seftan Delmer “the fire was started by the Nazis, who used the incident as a pretext to outlaw political opposition and impose dictatorship.”
My 2016 cohort standing in front of the Reichstag and when it was engulfed in flames. The fire began in the plenary chamber, the large central hall that lay directly beneath the great glass-and-iron dome designed by Paul Wallot behind. Two glass ceilings separated the chamber from the open space under the cupola. When firefighters first entered the building they found multiple small fires already burning among the wooden benches and furnishings. Shortly after 21.27 a sudden backdraft occurred and the chamber erupted into a single sheet of flame. Oberbrandmeister Puhle later described the moment when the flame “roared straight up toward the dome.” The glass dust ceilings shattered at once, giving the fire an unobstructed vertical path into the cupola. Within seconds the heat cracked and burst large sections of the dome’s glazing. Columns of fire and dense smoke poured upward through the iron ribs and out into the cold February night. From the street the dome appeared lit as if by searchlights; bursts of flame periodically obscured its outline. Franz von Papen, watching with President Hindenburg, recorded the same impression of a brilliantly illuminated cupola against the dark sky. The iron framework of the dome itself withstood the heat and did not collapse, although the glass covering was largely destroyed. The chimney effect created by the broken ceilings and shattered dome glazing actually helped the firefighters: smoke and flames were drawn upward and away from the lower corridors, allowing crews to attack the fire from the chamber doors with relative freedom from smoke. By approximately 11:00 p.m. the blaze was under control. The plenary chamber was completely gutted; the dome stood as a blackened iron skeleton stripped of its glass. 
Standing inside the preserved section of tunnel that connected the Reichstag to Goering's office across the street and on October 18, 1933 when a delegation inspected the Reichstag's tunnel to piece together the conditions of its burning. According to Shirer, who worked as a reporter during the Third Reich in Germany and had access to firsthand information (since pretty much discredited),
Standing within the Reichstag with Göring's former office shown behind across the street; the view would have been blocked by the Berlin wall during the Cold War. In his book published 1963 Tobias described the use of the famous tunnel from this building to the Reichstag was just an “ingenious communist speculation”. However, Tobias has been accused of dismissing “forensic evidence such as the testimony of fire experts who claimed the necessity of multiple arsonists to set the fire” whilst Richard Evans writes how “numerous forgeries and falsifications have been found among the documentary evidence purporting to prove Nazi involvement”. Indeed, Benjamin Carter claims that Tobias was a "senior official of Germany’s domestic intelligence services” who benefited from his personal ties to Gestapo officers. Nevertheless, in the so-called Brown Book published by the Communist activist Willi Münzenberg, there was enough evidence presented arguing that SA officers had accessed the Reichstag via the tunnel connected to Göering’s basement and started the fire. On the night of the fire Göering and Hitler were having dinner together at Göering’s apartment. In his book, Carter states ‘[t]he following day, a new draft now called Decree for the protection of the German people was set. This draft allowed the banning (..) of political meetings and political associations if they posed a threat to public security. But here again, Hitler demonstrated his sense of timing and political calculations”. For Hett, the fire happened so near the federal election that it could not have been just a mere coincidence; it was clearly done by the Nazis, who wanted to benefit politically from the event by pointing their fingers to both the Communists and Social Democrats. “Now the Red pest is being thoroughly rooted out.” (Goebbels) after communists were arrested by the SA. However, as Tobias explains in his book, the Nazis could not have been involved in the fire as by allowing Van der Lubbe to stand trial the Nazis already proved their innocence; if the Dutch communist had been in fact associated with them, the Nazis would have gotten rid of him before the police could have had the chance to question the suspect.
At the trial at Leipzig enough evidence suggested that van der Lubbe “did not possess the means to set so vast a building on fire so quickly.” The testimony of experts at the trial shows that more than one person must have set the fire, as such a widespread fire would have required large quantities of chemicals and gasoline. It was therefore obvious “that one man could not have carried them into the building alone.” However van der Lubbe, who already had a criminal record, had attempted several times earlier to arson different buildings in order to protest against the German government. These failures could have encouraged the 24-year old Communist to aim other sites such as in this case the Reichstag. Additionally van der Lubbe was caught with “flammable materials”, “sweating” and “breathing heavily” during his interrogation as if he just came from the crime scene. Lubbe’s behaviour during his interrogation and his items he was carrying with him clearly show that he had to do something with the fire. Why otherwise would he have carried around flammable materials on that particular day? Furthermore Kellerhof supports the theory of van der Lubbe being solely responsible for the fire as an own initiative to protest against the German system. He claims that a few flammable materials would have been enough to conduct the fire in the Reichstag alone, as the breaking of the glass of the dome of the Reichstag encouraged the contact between fire and oxygen, spreading the fire even more. This is also supported by Dr. Walter Zirpnis claiming at the Nuremberg trials that van der Lubbe acted by himself, even though Ernst Togler, Dimitroff, Popov and Tanev gave themselves up to the police. They only did this as a trigger to the police’s announcement to hang Marinus van der Lubbe.From Goering’s Reichstag President’s Palace an underground passage, built to carry the central heating system, ran to the Reichstag building. Through this tunnel Karl Ernst, a former hotel bellhop who had become the Berlin S.A. leader, led a small detachment of storm troopers on the night of February 27 to the Reichstag, where they scattered gasoline and self-igniting chemicals and then made their way quickly back to the palace the way they had come. At the same time a half-witted Dutch Communist with a passion for arson, Marinus van der Lubbe, had made his way into the huge, darkened and to him unfamiliar building and set some small fires of his own.
Standing within the Reichstag with Göring's former office shown behind across the street; the view would have been blocked by the Berlin wall during the Cold War. In his book published 1963 Tobias described the use of the famous tunnel from this building to the Reichstag was just an “ingenious communist speculation”. However, Tobias has been accused of dismissing “forensic evidence such as the testimony of fire experts who claimed the necessity of multiple arsonists to set the fire” whilst Richard Evans writes how “numerous forgeries and falsifications have been found among the documentary evidence purporting to prove Nazi involvement”. Indeed, Benjamin Carter claims that Tobias was a "senior official of Germany’s domestic intelligence services” who benefited from his personal ties to Gestapo officers. Nevertheless, in the so-called Brown Book published by the Communist activist Willi Münzenberg, there was enough evidence presented arguing that SA officers had accessed the Reichstag via the tunnel connected to Göering’s basement and started the fire. On the night of the fire Göering and Hitler were having dinner together at Göering’s apartment. In his book, Carter states ‘[t]he following day, a new draft now called Decree for the protection of the German people was set. This draft allowed the banning (..) of political meetings and political associations if they posed a threat to public security. But here again, Hitler demonstrated his sense of timing and political calculations”. For Hett, the fire happened so near the federal election that it could not have been just a mere coincidence; it was clearly done by the Nazis, who wanted to benefit politically from the event by pointing their fingers to both the Communists and Social Democrats. “Now the Red pest is being thoroughly rooted out.” (Goebbels) after communists were arrested by the SA. However, as Tobias explains in his book, the Nazis could not have been involved in the fire as by allowing Van der Lubbe to stand trial the Nazis already proved their innocence; if the Dutch communist had been in fact associated with them, the Nazis would have gotten rid of him before the police could have had the chance to question the suspect. .gif)
Nazis entering the Reichstag and the council chamber on August 30, 1932, the day Hermann Göring was elected President of the Reichstag. On that day KPD member Clara Zetkin, socialist-communist politician, peace activist and women's rights activist, had travelled to Berlin especially for this purpose, opened the inaugural session as the oldest member of the Reichstag. She had recently recovered from a severe bout of malaria and was still very weak but devoted her opening speech to the fight against fascism. She accused the SPD of having been the pacesetter of the presidential cabinets, which she described as reactionary and pro-fascist. In accordance with the duties of a senior member of the Reichstag, she presided over the election of Göring as President of the Reichstag and then handed over the chair of the session to him. The Nazis had listened to Zetkin's speech without heckling or other disruptions, and this session is the only surviving audio recording from the Reichstag in which Zetkin can be heard. As a result of the Reichstag Fire Decree, Zetkin moved to the Soviet Union dying shortly after on June 20, 1933 at the age of almost 76. Stalin himself carried the urn to the burial where she is one of the few Germans to be buried at the Kremlin wall. Her brain, like that of Lenin and Mayakovsky, was kept in the Moscow Institute for Brain Research.
Inside the chamber during my 2012 and 2013 Bavarian International School trips and as it appeared during the era of the Weimar Republic. This plenary chamber of the Reichstag, the Sitzungssaal, occupied the central position of the building directly beneath the glass cupola. Measuring approximately 29 metres in length and 22 metres in depth, the chamber was roofed by two successive glass ceilings that separated the assembly hall from the air space of the dome above. The deputies’ seats rose in a semicircle from the front of the room, where the president’s desk, the speaker’s podium, the stenographers’ enclosure and the benches for the cabinet and Reichsrat were located. The interior was heavily panelled in wood, with curtains and wall coverings that provided abundant combustible material. When, at approximately 21.27 the chamber underwent a sudden and complete conflagration, its glass ceilings shattered, allowing the flames to rise into the cupola and drawing a strong draught that accelerated the destruction. The wooden interior of the plenary hall was entirely consumed. The collapse of the glazed roof structure fed the fire with additional oxygen from the dome, ensuring the total loss of the chamber while the outer walls of the building remained standing. 
Hitler would utilise the Reichstag Fire to set the tone of his political trajectory. His speech on March 23, 1933, aimed at securing approval for the Enabling Act, underscores this. He declared, "The Reichstag fire was the work of the enemies of the German people. It was a terrorist act aimed at our new government's efforts to restore order." The narrative that the Nazi Party was Germany's guardian against threats of communism and internal chaos emerged through his words, leveraging the Reichstag fire as a political instrument. The 1935 Nuremberg Rally, officially known as the "Rally of Freedom", commemorated the Enabling Act. Goebbels, delivering the opening speech, underlined the Reichstag Fire's significance, stating, "Two years ago, Germany was still under the crushing yoke of the Treaty of Versailles... The Reichstag fire was a signal to rise up and fight this oppression." The fire was metaphorically represented as the impetus that propelled their struggle against the oppressive Versailles Treaty. Speer's ambitious architectural project also demonstrated the Reichstag's symbolic role. His memoirs reveal Hitler's vision for the new Reichstag: "It was to be crowned with a huge dome, inside of which there would be an assembly room for party leaders, a symbol of their dominance over the Reichstag, which Hitler regarded as synonymous with the weak and despised Weimar democracy."
Dieter Appett's memorial directly in front of the Reichstag on the southern edge of Platz der Republik, commemorating the 96 Social Democratic and Communist Reichstag delegates murdered under the Third Reich. Together with Klaus W. Eisenlohr, Justus Müller and Christian Zwirner, it was inaugurated on September 12, 1992 on the initiative of the citizens’ group Perspektive Berlin. These upright cast-iron plates are arranged in a continuous, low-lying row carrying on each narrow upper edge, the name of one deputy, the years of birth and death, the place of death, and the party affiliation. Of those commemorated, the great majority belonged to the Communist Party of Germany and the Social Democratic Party; smaller numbers came from the Centre Party, the Bavarian People’s Party and other democratic groups of the Weimar Republic. They died in concentration camps such as Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen, in gaols, on transport, or in staged accidents and executions between 1933 and 1945. Nazis killed in internal power struggles like the Night of the Long Knives in 1934 were deliberately excluded. A number of additional murdered or fatally persecuted Reichstag members are absent, and the precise reasons for some omissions remain unclear. In the 1980s the very idea of a public memorial that would place Communist deputies alongside Social Democrats met resistance from parts of the political establishment, including then-Bundestag President Philipp Jenninger. Placed immediately before the building that once housed the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic and now houses the Bundestag, it confronts every visitor with the human cost of the suspension of democracy. 
My 2011 cohort inside the memorial room within the Reichstag dedicated to those members of the Weimar Republic’s parliament who were murdered, driven to their deaths or otherwise destroyed by the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. Inaugurated on February 26, 1992 by Bundestag President Rita Süssmuth, the site is located in the area of the former Philipp-Scheidemann-Raum and is now integrated into the members’ lobby after the Foster renovation. The central artistic element is a large five-part photographic work by Katharina Sieverding. Executed in the colours black, red and yellow, the images evoke both the burning of the Reichstag in February 1933 and the possibility of political renewal. Beside the photographic installation stand three memorial volumes designed by Klaus Mettig. These books contain biographical entries on approximately 120 deputies, an expanded group that includes not only those directly murdered but also those who died as a consequence of imprisonment, were forced into exile, or suffered other forms of systematic persecution. The entries record party affiliation, dates of birth and death, places of detention or execution, and the circumstances of each individual’s fate wherever these can be established. 
T
he majority of the victims belonged to the Communist Party of Germany and the Social Democratic Party; smaller numbers came from the Centre Party, the Bavarian People’s Party and other democratic groupings. Their deaths occurred in concentration camps such as Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen, in prisons, on transport, or in staged “accidents” and shootings. The memorial therefore documents the deliberate destruction of parliamentary opposition once the Enabling Act and the instruments of the police state had eliminated legal protection. A complementary installation by Christian Boltanski in the basement, the “Archive of German Parliamentarians,” consists of some five thousand oxidised metal boxes stacked along the walls. Each box bears the name of a deputy elected between 1919 and 1999. A single black box marks the rupture of the Nazi period, visually interrupting the continuous sequence of democratic representation.
Inside the basement on the eastern side of the Reichstag building is another commemorative installation, Christian Boltanski’s Archiv der Deutschen Abgeordneten, completed in 1999. Nearly 5,000 oxidised metal boxes are stacked in two facing rows that rise to the ceiling, forming a narrow, dimly lit corridor illuminated only by carbon-filament lamps. Each box carries a small white label bearing the name of a parliamentarian democratically elected between 1919 and 1999: members of the National Assembly of 1919–20, of the Reichstags of the Weimar Republic, and of the Bundestag up to the year the renovated building resumed parliamentary business.From a distance the stacked boxes resemble a continuous brick wall. Boltanski intended this visual effect as a metaphor for the foundations of German parliamentary democracy. A single black box interrupts the sequence and marks the years 1933 to 1945, when no democratically legitimated parliament existed. Boxes belonging to those murdered under the Nazis are additionally marked with a black band inscribed “Opfer des Nationalsozialismus” together with the date of death. Some Communist deputies are recorded as victims of both National Socialist and Stalinist persecution. The installation deliberately treats every name with formal equality whilst still registering the historical rupture of dictatorship and the targeted killing of elected representatives.
The Reichstag during the anti-Bolshevik exhibition “Bolschewismus ohne Maske,” opened on November 6, 1937 under the organisation of the Gauleitung Berlin of the NSDAP. It remained on view until December 19, 1937. The western façade
provided the principal external setting for the inaugural gathering,
whilst the rooms inside housed the sequential anti-Bolshevik exhibits
organised by the Gauleitung Berlin. The opening ceremony was held in front of the western façade, where a large crowd of Nazi Party supporters assembled beneath the main portal which coincided with the day Italy formally adhered to the Anti-Comintern
Pact which explains the Nazi and Italian flags. The presence of an Italian section and of General Alessandro Melchiori, head of the Italian section of the exhibition, underscored
the alignment between the two regimes within the broader anti-Bolshevik
campaign. The exhibition formed part of a series of anti-Bolshevik
propaganda initiatives staged by the Nazis between 1936 and 1938.
Posters and promotional material issued for the Berlin showing depicted
Bolshevism in violent and conspiratorial terms and were produced under
the authority of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and
Propaganda. This particular exhibition occupied interior rooms of the Reichstag and was conceived as a major propaganda event directed by the Berlin Gau. One room inside focused on the Berlin-Rome axis. The Reichstag building served as the sole venue for the entire run. 
A total of 89 heavy artillery guns and Katyusha rocket launchers were trained on the Reichstag for a thunderous barrage before the infantry stormed it, turning the structure into a ruin. I'm sitting on the steps on the right, providing a comparison to its ruined state immediately after the war.
The GIF on the left shows the area around the Reichstag being cleared of rubble and the site today soon after my class of 2023 detrained and began their walk to our hostel. Immediately after the end of the war, the Reichstag building, which had been heavily contested for the last time, stood as a partial ruin in an environment characterised by rubble. The surrounding open spaces were used by the starving population to grow potatoes and vegetables. The city encouraged participation in clearing the rubble and helping rebuild by making the second-highest category of food ration cards available to the so-called 'Rubble Women', or Trümmerfrauen. The myth is one of smiling women cheerfully lugging stones and bricks which has now become ingrained in the German collective consciousness; her statue now erected all over the country in her honour. However, this campaign originally only worked in the eastern sector where the Trümmerfrau ideal became the role model for women seeking traditional male work and not in the area here within the British sector which maintained the traditional view of a woman’s role. In fact, Leonie Treber calls the story of the Trümmerfrau a myth given that not only was there not a particularly large number of women involved in the clearing of the rubble, those who did help did so involuntarily. Treber's doctorate at Duisburg-Essen University about them. Before that, the subject had not been studied academically. She has recently published a book based on her research called “The Myth of the Trümmerfrauen.” According to Treber, the role that women played in clearing out all of that rubble was minor; whilst in Berlin 60,000 women are documented as having worked to clear rubble, this constituted but 5% of the female population of the city.
The majority of the victims belonged to the Communist Party of Germany and the Social Democratic Party; smaller numbers came from the Centre Party, the Bavarian People’s Party and other democratic groupings. Their deaths occurred in concentration camps such as Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen, in prisons, on transport, or in staged “accidents” and shootings. The memorial therefore documents the deliberate destruction of parliamentary opposition once the Enabling Act and the instruments of the police state had eliminated legal protection. A complementary installation by Christian Boltanski in the basement, the “Archive of German Parliamentarians,” consists of some five thousand oxidised metal boxes stacked along the walls. Each box bears the name of a deputy elected between 1919 and 1999. A single black box marks the rupture of the Nazi period, visually interrupting the continuous sequence of democratic representation.
From our 2011 and 2013 class trips, showing on the right the site on May 15, 1919, amidst a protest against the Versailles treaty.
The GIF on the left shows the area around the Reichstag being cleared of rubble and the site today soon after my class of 2023 detrained and began their walk to our hostel. Immediately after the end of the war, the Reichstag building, which had been heavily contested for the last time, stood as a partial ruin in an environment characterised by rubble. The surrounding open spaces were used by the starving population to grow potatoes and vegetables. The city encouraged participation in clearing the rubble and helping rebuild by making the second-highest category of food ration cards available to the so-called 'Rubble Women', or Trümmerfrauen. The myth is one of smiling women cheerfully lugging stones and bricks which has now become ingrained in the German collective consciousness; her statue now erected all over the country in her honour. However, this campaign originally only worked in the eastern sector where the Trümmerfrau ideal became the role model for women seeking traditional male work and not in the area here within the British sector which maintained the traditional view of a woman’s role. In fact, Leonie Treber calls the story of the Trümmerfrau a myth given that not only was there not a particularly large number of women involved in the clearing of the rubble, those who did help did so involuntarily. Treber's doctorate at Duisburg-Essen University about them. Before that, the subject had not been studied academically. She has recently published a book based on her research called “The Myth of the Trümmerfrauen.” According to Treber, the role that women played in clearing out all of that rubble was minor; whilst in Berlin 60,000 women are documented as having worked to clear rubble, this constituted but 5% of the female population of the city.
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Me sitting on the steps leading to the entrance of the Reichstag and the original iconic image of a demoralised German soldier amidst the ruins. The remains disappeared behind covering panels; new mezzanines increased the useful area and largely changed the original spatial structure. The Chamber was now twice as large and could have accommodated all the members of a reunited Germany although ever since the four-power agreement of 1971, no plenary sessions of the Bundestag were allowed to be held in Berlin. Instead, only committee or group meetings were possible in the newly established rooms. Baumgarten's interventions (which cost 110 million marks reflect the lack of taste and sensitivity seen in postwar architechture everywhere. Thus and decorative design was taboo and straight lines and smooth surfaces dominated. Historic preservation aspects had little weight. In addition, in the case of the Reichstag building, there was a special motif, beyond aesthetic considerations: the building was originally, despite its parliamentary destiny, the symbol of a pre-democratic form of state. This was followed by a weak democracy and a brutal dictatorship. The Germans had just found their way back to a still young democracy and so it therefore only seemed logical to distance themselves from the past with clear cuts, and with a strictly contemporary aesthetic. During the partition of Berlin, the Reichstag building was located in the British sector, but the Berlin Wall ran directly on the east side of the building. The “lonely, shot up Reichstag” became a symbol – as “sandstone cutolos in no-man’s-to-hearland between the enemy world systems.” In the building was a museum about the Bundestag and the history of the Reichstag building. For foreign state guests, the visit to the outdoor terraces with a view of the Berlin Wall was part of the usual programme. 
Here on the left is the scene the day after the breaching of the wall and today. Since 1971, the building has shown the exhibition “Questions to German History” and visited by several million interested parties. On the initiative of Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his Federal Minister of State, Oscar Schneider, an expert report was obtained from Gottfried Böhm from RWTH Aachen in 1985 on how the building could be used in the future – especially in the case of reunification – and what modifications would be required. The report was treated confidentially. Until 1988, Böhm designed a glass dome that went to visitors and should symbolise openness and democratic participation. After German reunification the first session of the Bundestag in the reunified Germany took place in the Reichstag; for the first time with the 144 members, who were sent to the Bundestag by the freely elected Volkskammer for the period until the first all-German election. The meeting was sworn in to the meeting and Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl made his government statement. Nevertheless the use of the Reichstag building was only determined by the Bundestag after an intensive and controversial debate in the Capital Decree on June 20, 1991 in Bonn by a narrow majority of 338 to 320 votes. 
This includes graffiti of Soviet soldiers in Cyrillic script from the May days of 1945. Initially, the surroundings and installations of Baumgarten from the 1960s were removed; 45,000 tonnes of debris had to be removed. In order to guarantee the stability of the modified building, ninety new ones were added to the 2300 support piles that Paul Wallot had once sunk underground of the building. The shell was started in June 1996 as within the centre of the building, a new building in the old building was built. It mainly includes the Chamber, which extends over all three main floors and was changed so that the Presidium is now placed on the east side, as in the early days of the building. The plenary hall is also illuminated by a mirror system that didicates daylight from the dome to the hall. On the second floor are offices and reception rooms of the parliament president and the meeting room of the council of elders; on the third floor, the offices of the members of parliament and the parliamentary groups as well as the central press lobby are housed. A roof terrace with a restaurant for MEPs is also open to the public after prior security check. The north and south wing, about two thirds of the building, remained as a historic existence and were merely renovated. Contemporary materials such as exposed concrete, glass and steel were used in the new building, predominantly limestone and sandstone in bright, warm colours in the old building sector. A newly developed colour concept is to contribute to the clarity in the building. A total of nine, sometimes very strong colours characterise different areas. The rooms were given round-coloured wooden panels – some of which was perceived as problematic in relation to the works of art shown there.
More Soviet soldiers died getting from where my Bavarian International School cohort of 2023 is standing to get the picture of the Soviet standard on the roof for Stalin than the British, Canadians and Americans who died storming the beaches at Normandy. The Reichstag had been seen as symbolic of, and at the heart of, the "fascist beast." It was arguably the most symbolic target in Berlin. On April 30 there had been tremendous pressure from Stalin to take the building in time for the International Workers' Day, May 1.
At 1300 hours, a thundering barrage from 152mm and 203mm howitzers, tank guns, SPGs, and Katyusha rocket launchers - in all, 89 guns - was loosed against the Reichstag. A number of infantrymen joined in with captured Panzerfausts. Smoke and debris almost completely obscured the bright, sunny day. Captain Neustroyev's battalion was the first to move. Crouching next to the captain, Sergeant Ishchanov requested and was granted permission to be the first to break into the building with his section. Slipping out of a window on the first floor of the Interior Ministry building, Ishchanov's men began crawling across the open, broken ground towards the Reichstag, and rapidly secured entrances at several doorways and holes in the outer wall.Captain Neustroyev took the rest of the forward company, with their Red Banner, and raced across the space, bounding up the central staircase and through the doors and breaches in the wall. The company cleared the first floor easily, but quickly discovered that the massive building's upper floors and extensive underground labyrinth were occupied by a substantial garrison of German soldiers. One floor at a time, they began attempting to reduce the German force. The task uppermost in everyone's mind was to make their way to the top and raise the banner; the soldiers who succeeded in this symbolic act, it had been promised, would be made Heroes of the Soviet Union. Fighting their way up the staircase to the second floor with grenades, Sergeants Yegorov and Kantariya managed to hang their battalion's banner from a second-floor window, but their efforts to take the third floor were repeatedly thrown back. It was 1425 hours.
Bahm (155-156) Berlin 1945: The Final Reckoning
While the loose scrum fought in chaos, two men of the banner group tried to slip past to race for the roof with their red flag. They managed to reach the second floor before they were pinned down by machine-gun fire. The regiment claimed that a second attempt at 10.50 p.m. succeeded and the red flag flew from the cupola of the Reichstag. This version must be treated with extreme caution, since Soviet propaganda was fixated with the idea of the Reichstag being captured by 1 May. Whatever the exact time, the `hoisting of the Red Flag of Victory' was a superficial gesture at that stage, since even the official accounts acknowledge the ferocity of the fighting, which continued all night. As the Soviet troops fought their way upstairs, the Germans from the cellars attacked them from behind. At one point Lieutenant Klochkov saw a group of his soldiers crouched in a circle as if examining something on the floor. They all suddenly leaped back together and he saw that it was a hole. The group had just dropped grenades in unison on to the heads of unsuspecting Germans on the floor below.Beevor (365-6) Berlin: The Downfall 1945
My 2017 cohort surreptitiously holding the Bavarian International School banner above the Reichstag. When the fighting was over, Marshal Zhukov found over twenty reports and recommendations for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on his desk. The documents showed different and contradictory accounts of the time and location of hoisting the Banner of Victor)'. Zhukov announced that no one was to receive the HSU title until the confusion was sorted out. For the time being, the men would receive the lesser award of the Order of the Red Banner. Col. Fyodor Zinchenko, commander of the 756th Rifle Regiment, which stormed the Reichstag, was awarded the title of HSU on May 31, 1945, as was Lt. Col. Naum Peysakhovski of the 164th. However, the other men connected with the banner raising did not receive the HSU title until a year later, on the first anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War. On May 8, 1946, Capt. Stepan Neustroyev, Sgt. Mikhail Yegorov, and Jr. Sgt. Meliton Kantaria became Heroes of the Soviet Union, followed by Sgt. Maj. Ilya Syanov a week later. Lt. Alexei Berest, who surely deserved the award, was ignored. In 2002, veterans of Rostov sent a petition to President Putin to recognise Berest with the title of Hero of Russia. Berest had died long before, killed in 1970 whilst saving a girl from under the wheels of a train.
Inside Sir Norman Foster's glass dome, which is has now developed into a much-visited attraction and a landmark of Berlin. It was conceived as a deliberate architectural statement about the nature of parliamentary democracy in the reunified Federal Republic. The dome is fully transparent. Visitors ascend spiral ramps that wind around its interior and look down through the glass floor into the debating chamber below which is intended to place the public physically above the elected representatives, reversing the hierarchical relationship that had characterised earlier German regimes in which the population was subordinate to the state. After
a security check, one can first access the 24-metre-high accessible
roof by means of an elevator; one of my students had been detained after
attempting to bring a crude Chinese star into the building with
unfortunate results. Here my students end the day looking directly down at the chamber. The material itself, clear glass, is supposed to embody the principle of political transparency. Foster and the parliamentary building commission intended the dome to signal that the proceedings of the Bundestag were open to scrutiny and that the building contained no hidden centres of power. 
Daylight is directed into the chamber by a central mirrored cone, reinforcing the metaphorical link between illumination and open government. The dome also functions as a public observation platform. At the same time the dome marks a conscious break with the building’s earlier history. The original cupola had been destroyed; its replacement in glass rather than stone or masonry rejects monumental opacity in favour of lightness and visibility. The design therefore operates simultaneously as a functional public gallery, a source of natural light, and a permanent visual declaration that democratic authority in contemporary Germany is exercised under the eyes of the people. By November 2010, as long as the dome was freely accessible, an average of 8,000 visitors were counted every day. The number fell sharply when access was limited for security reasons, and today about three million visitors per year are admitted. Due to the threat of Islamist terror attacks, the dome was briefly closed in November and December 2010 but today has reopened for individuals and groups, but only after previous online registration. In the first week of March, 2011, a 30-year old Canadian tourist was arrested on Saturday for posing for a photograph whilst giving the Nazi salute outside the Reichstag according to the Telegraph. Berlin police arrived on the scene within seconds, handcuffed him and took his camera's memory card. The pose is a chargeable offence of up to six months in prison, yet the man was freed after being held in custody for several hours.
Standing in one of the rooms that keeps the preserved graffiti displayed. In 1999, there was still discussion about the preservation of Russian graffiti given it recorded a triumph of the victors over defeated Germany with an appeal to remove the writings completely. Although their appeal fell on deaf ears, it is important to note that with the interference and the request of the Russian Embassy, some graffiti messages due to their vulgarity were removed, mostly those which contained abuse or politically motivated remarks, and the surviving graffiti cleaned and preserved under the supervision of Berlin’s Head of Conservation. This censorship is a real shame which prevents one from being able to form a comprehensive picture of the Soviet liberators, with all the simplicity and pure, rough emotional expression of Soviet-subjected peoples, a somewhat sanitised version of history is presented, further alienating us from the events. That said, the vast majority of the graffiti consisted of the formula ‘... was here’ (‘здесь был’), followed by the date or the name of the soldier’s hometown or region, his rank, the route taken by his troops or the military unit to which he belonged. A few contained abuse or such innocuous politically-motivated remarks, such as "Gornin was here and spat" and "They’ve paid the price for Leningrad". 
Others indicate that the writers had confused the Reichstag building with the Reich Chancellery such as that which reads "[w]e were in the Reichstag, in Hitler’s den! Captain Koklyushkin, Senior Lieutenant Krasnikov, J. 15/V 45".Some soldiers recorded pride in their military prowess: ‘Glory to the pontoon builders, who conquered the Spree and its canals. We were in the Reichstag 6.5.45, Ivanov and Tchikhlin’. One graffito shows an heart pierced by an arrow accompanied by the words ‘Anatoli and Galina’. The hometowns and regions reflect the ethnic and political diversity of the peoples from the Soviet Union who made up the Red Army. ‘Todorov V.I.’ and ‘Todovrov V.’, for example, state that they came from the Donbass, whilst ‘Shevchenko’ is ‘from Ukraine’. Others reveal ‘Marched Teheran – Baku – Berlin’ or name their home as the Caucasus, Yerevan or Novosibirsk. In view of the large number of graffiti it's hardly surprising that some of their originators can still be identified decades later. Anar Nayafov, a student from Azerbaijan on an internship with a member of the Bundestag, discovered a graffito written by his grandfather Mamed Nayafov. Veterans Pavel Zolotaryov and Professor Boris Sapunov, both from St Petersburg, actually found the graffiti they had written over half a century earlier. One tour guide spoke of how "[a] group of veterans’ wives from what was then Stalingrad examined the graffiti. After the tour an elderly woman from the group came up to me and told me that her deceased husband said he’d been here and had also immortalised himself. Tears flowed when the old woman eventually stood in front of her husband’s written testimony." The Cyrillic graffiti are thus more than pieces of historical evidence but serve to bring history to life and deliver the recording of major events into the hands of those who experienced them at first hand and who often enough were forced to suffer from them. One remaining bit of vulgarity has been allowed to remain however, barely legible in the building’s southeastern corner: “I fuck Hitler in the arse.”
The Nazis' enemies had first been able to visualise their moment of vengeance just over two years before. On 1 February 1943, an angry Soviet colonel collared a group of emaciated German prisoners in the rubble of Stalingrad. "That's how Berlin is going to look!" he yelled, pointing to the ruined buildings all around. When I read those words some six years ago, I sensed immediately what my next book had to be. Among the graffiti preserved on the Reichstag's walls in Berlin, one can still see the two cities linked by Russians exulting in their revenge, forcing the invaders from their furthest point of eastward advance right back to the heart of the Reich.
Systematic
documentation of the surviving marks was later undertaken by
researchers, most notably Karin Felix. She'd worked for many years as a visitor guide inside the building, and has systematically photographed, transcribed and translated the surviving marks floor by floor. Her catalogue, published as Ich war hier – Zdes’ byl: Die Graffitis im Reichstagsgebäude, records more than seven hundred names together with dates, places of origin and short statements. The work also incorporates correspondence with veterans and their families, thereby linking individual inscriptions to identifiable soldiers. The documentation demonstrates both the repetitive character of the name-and-date formulae and the occasional appearance of more reflective or emotionally charged remarks. Her work established the
full extent of the corpus, identified individual writers where possible
through correspondence with veterans and their families, and recorded
the precise locations of the marks within the building. The resulting
catalogue demonstrates that the graffiti are not a uniform propaganda
exercise but a collection of personal, often laconic statements of
presence, origin and immediate reaction to the end of the fighting. As seen here, no attempt has been made to isolate them behind glass or to present them as a discrete exhibition. They remain part of the architectural envelope of a functioning parliament. Visitors encounter them in the course of moving through the building rather than as objects arranged for contemplation. The conservation approach has been one of stabilisation rather than restoration: the media have been fixed against further loss, yet the marks retain the provisional, improvised character of their original execution. Lighting in the relevant corridors is functional rather than theatrical; the graffiti are simply present on the walls. .gif)
Marija Filippowna Limanskaja directing traffic by the Brandenburg Gate with the Reichstag behind on May 5, 1945 and students from my 2024 cohort at the site today. Known as Masha, she'd voluntarily joined the Red Army as a military policewoman in 1942. Not much is known about her early days in the military other than that she'd served as a soldier in places such as Sevastopol and Rostov-on-Don and narrowly escaped with her life several times. It so happened that shortly after she left a shelter, the house was destroyed by an aerial bomb. She was just as lucky when she was almost run over by a passing truck. She became famous when she was filmed and photographed by the Soviet photographer and war correspondent Yevgeny Khaldei whose photos he took were published in numerous newspapers around the world. After her time in front of the Brandenburg Gate, she was deployed as a traffic police officer at the Potsdam Conferences in July 1945 where she had the great honour of meeting Churchill himself who asked her whether the English soldiers had kept their manners towards her and her colleagues, to which she replied "[i]f they don't, our soldiers will defend us." Churchill walked away smiling. Limanskaya later recalled that "[he] looked precisely the way I imagined him, puffing on a cigar". After the war, Limanskaya married and had two daughters, but they separated relatively quickly. After a long period alone, she married the war veteran Viktor and was married to him for 23 years until his death. Limanskaya turned 100 on April 12, 2024.
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The Red Army marching past the Reichstag on the left on what is now Friedrich-Ebert-Platz on May 20, 1945 in a photo taken by Soviet Army photographer Valery Faminsky and me today. This square, separated from the northern section of Ebertstraße, lies between Reichstagufer and Dorotheenstraße on the border of the district of Tiergarten. The rear of the Reichstag building and the listed Reichstag President's Palace, completed in 1904, with a garden and tunnel to the Reichstag building are located here. In the area of the square is the White Crosses memorial site, which symbolically commemorates the victims of the Wall. Only the building in the background survives from the time. Behind me can be seen, across the Spree, the Library of the German Bundestag. Completed in 2024, as a library it leaves much to be desired; its five levels make the routes long and time-consuming and the noise pollution between the open levels is exacerbated by the concrete surfaces. The facade, which is completely glazed to the south and west has the disadvantage that light and sunlight have a negative effect on the lighting and air conditioning of the room. 
The wrapping of the Reichstag by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in the summer of 1995 and my 2022 cohort. This was the culmination of a 24 year campaign that began in 1971, when the Berlin-based historian Michael S. Cullen first suggested the building to the artists. At that time the Reichstag still stood in the divided city, scarred by the 1933 fire, wartime in 1945 and only partially restored; it was used mainly for exhibitions and remained a politically sensitive site straddling East and West. The project was refused three times by successive presidents of the Bundestag before Rita Süssmuth, elected in 1988, gave it sustained support after German reunification. On February 25, 1994 the Bundestag voted, after a lengthy and sometimes heated debate, to permit the work by 292 votes to 223. Chancellor Helmut Kohl and parliamentary leader Wolfgang Schäuble were among the most prominent opponents, arguing that the building’s historical dignity would be compromised. The artists financed the entire undertaking themselves through the sale of preparatory drawings, collages and models; no public money or commercial sponsorship was accepted at a final cost of approximately 13 million Deutschmarks. Ninety professional climbers and 120 workers unfurled 100,000 square metres of thick, aluminium-coated polypropylene fabric, secured by 15.6 kilometres of blue polypropylene rope. No cranes were used; the fabric was lowered by hand so that the process itself formed part of the artwork. The building remained fully wrapped from June 24 until July 7, 1995. During that fortnight an estimated five million people visited the site, filling the surrounding lawns day and night. After the fabric was removed, all materials were recycled. The temporary transformation of the long-dormant parliamentary building is widely regarded as one of the defining public art events of the decade and as a symbolic moment in Berlin’s transition from divided city to restored capital. 
The Swiss Embassy near the Reichstag during the Battle for Berlin and my 2022 cohort in front. The building was used as the Soviet Red Army headquarters during the battle for Berlin. This building is in fact the only one to emerge intact after the war. It was completed by the architect Friedrich Hitzig in 1871 as a private city palace. The Swiss Confederation acquired the building in 1919 when, after renovations, it served as the chancellery of the Swiss legation from 1920. It survived both Hitler's demolition work for his "world capital Germania" and the war to end up as the only building in the Spreebogen without serious damage. In the final phase of the struggle for Berlin in late April 1945, the embassy was temporarily occupied by Soviet troops and served as a base for the conquest of the Reichstag. During the bombing raids, the embassy was housed in Rauschendorf Castle near Sonnenberg. When in October 1992 after the final decision had been made in favour of Berlin as the federal capital, the building became the seat of a branch office of the Swiss Embassy in Bonn. The embassy building was renovated and received a controversial extension on the east side by the architects Diener & Diener as shown in the then-and-now GIF above. 
Past the embassy towards the central railway station across the river is the Moltke bridge which saw heavy fighting during the Battle of Berlin in April 1945 at the end of the war. A damaged griffin is left on the bank beside the bridge as a reminder, shown inset and circled as it appeared during the fighting. Though damaged, the bridge itself was one of the few to survive the war and looks similar to the original construction, though it was repaired and strengthened to take the weight of modern traffic.
The Moltke bridge before the battle when German defenders, about five thousand members of the ϟϟ and Volksturm, barricaded the bridge at both ends and wired it for demolition, and my Bavarian International School seniors at the same spot in 2020. Beevor describes the action in Berlin: The Downfall 1945 (340, 347–349) when, on April 28, units of the Soviet 3rd Shock Army, commanded by Major-General S.N. Perevertkin, fought their way down Alt-Moabit towards the bridge:
The Moltke bridge before the battle when German defenders, about five thousand members of the ϟϟ and Volksturm, barricaded the bridge at both ends and wired it for demolition, and my Bavarian International School seniors at the same spot in 2020. Beevor describes the action in Berlin: The Downfall 1945 (340, 347–349) when, on April 28, units of the Soviet 3rd Shock Army, commanded by Major-General S.N. Perevertkin, fought their way down Alt-Moabit towards the bridge:Another 6oo metres beyond stood the Reichstag, which from time to time became visible when the smoke cleared. For the 15oth and the 171st Rifle Divisions, it seemed so close now, and yet they had no illusions about the dangers ahead. They knew that many of them would die before they could raise their red banners over the building chosen by Stalin as the symbol of Berlin. Their commanders, to please Comrade Stalin, wanted the building captured in time for it to be announced at the May Day celebrations in Moscow.The advance down to the Moltke bridge began on the afternoon of 28 April. The lead battalions from the two divisions left from the same start-line, further emphasising the race. The bridge ahead was barricaded on both sides. It was mined and protected with barbed wire and covered by machine-gun and artillery fire from both flanks. Shortly before 6 p.m., there was a deafening detonation as the Germans blew the Moltke bridge. When the smoke and dust settled, it became clear that the demolition had not been entirely successful. The bridge sagged, but was certainly passable by infantry.
From the same spot, showing the bridge a month later with the griffin completely destroyed. By midnight, the Soviet 150th and 171st rifle divisions had secured the bridgehead against any counterattack the Germans could muster. From here they moved on the Reichstag, which they captured on May Day.
