ENGLISH

Berlin Castle stood on this spot from 1443 until 1950. It took on its final appearance, maintained until 1950, in the years 1699-1718 thanks to the famous sculptor and architect Andreas Schlüter and his successor Johann Friedrich Eosander von Göthe. It was the seat of the Hohenzollern dynasty, in other worlds of Prussian kings and German emperors, until 1918, and served from then until 1945 as a museum and was the seat of various institutions, but not that of the Government.

On 3 February 1945 it was badly hit during a devastating bombing raid on Berlin and burned almost completely to the ground. The ruins were subsequently further damaged by artillery shelling during the final battle for Berlin. Despite this, the Castle was still basically preserved in its masonry structure, as you can see in the pictures, and less destroyed than Charlottenburg Palace which lies in the western part of the city and where one can nowadays, after its reconstruction, no longer discern any of the serious war damage.

On the orders of the general secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, Walter Ulbricht, later head of State of the GDR, the Castle was dynamited between September and December 1950. It was to make way for huge parade grounds on which during major celebrations of the municipal and party leadership within five hours 750,000 people were at first supposed to be able to file past a grandstand and after 1976 file past the front of the Palace of the Republic for the purpose of paying homage to the State's leadership.

Not much remained of the Castle. The largest excavated component is the erstwhile portal IV which in 1963 was built into the GDR State Council Building here on the southern border of the square. It was, after all, of utmost importance for the GDR's governmental leadership, since in 1918 the socialist leader Karl Liebknecht had proclaimed the socialist German republic from its balcony, albeit to no avail. This provided the portal with a special rank, for which reason it had been detached before blasting was done on the Castle. Substantial portions of the facade sculpturing were likewise salvaged and stored in various museums. In addition, a large number of architectural fragments of this important Berlin structure are in existence. In front of you is the recently excavated bottom basement of the northwest corner of the Castle; only about 15% of the entire area of its foundations was exposed in doing so. We request your indulgence that, for reasons of economy, we have only been able to print our commentary in German. All illustrations were produced through volunteer work by the Berlin City Castle Sponsor's Association and were paid for through contributions and donations of its members - and the donations did not suffice for detailed commentaries in foreign languages.

We still hope that you can understand the information plaques with the aid of the illustrations and assisted by this brief text.

Hence a few more pointers on this subject.

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