Palace of the Federal Council - an overlooked gem among Berlin's monuments

Berlin - In the shadow of the world-famous Reichstag building, the seat of the lower house of the German parliament, the historic palace of the Bundesrat is hunched down in Berlin, where members of the second chamber of the legislative body convene. Although it is located right in the city center, there are no crowds of foreign tourists gathered in front of it like there are before its more famous "legislative sibling," and probably not every German could immediately recall its appearance. Unjustly, as there are not many monuments in Berlin that reflect the revolutionary history of Germany over the last century as much as the seat of the Bundesrat does.
      In the places where the extensive neoclassical complex designed by architect Friedrich Schulze-Kolbitz stands today, the Prussian royal porcelain factory operated in the past, and the family of the renowned composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy lived here. After the proclamation of the German Empire in 1871, Chancellor Bismarck had the then buildings confiscated and moved the original Reichstag into them. When German deputies received their current representative seat 23 years later, their temporary address was demolished, and in 1904, the palace of the Prussian House of Lords was erected there.
      "The seat of the noble chamber was here until 1918, after which the Prussian State Council convened here, whose president was the young Konrad Adenauer, and during Nazism, it was taken over by Hermann Göring's Ministry of Aviation. After World War II, there were considerations for the GDR government to be based here, but in the end, it was acquired by the Academy of Sciences, which had the bombed core sealed and set up its offices in the rest," guided Antje Lorenz quickly listed the other tenants of this building.
      The construction was most influenced by the communist era. It stood right by the Berlin Wall, and thus all windows facing the "capitalist West" had to be bricked up. "After the fall of the regime, this building was so to speak rediscovered. After the decision in 1996 to move the Bundesrat from Bonn to Berlin, it underwent reconstruction, and since 2000, after more than a century of revolutionary history, the democratic parliament has made its home here," Lorenz concluded the excursion with the history of the palace and Germany itself.
      This history is also reflected in the current form of the Bundesrat's seat. From the outside, it still looks like the splendid chamber of the Prussian nobility, its majesty only disrupted by cars constantly passing along the busy Leipzig Street. Visitors can still find remnants of bygone pomp inside, but due to the events of war and insensitive renovation interventions by socialist engineers, the interiors had to be clad in a more modern shell in many places.
      "Architect Schweger tried to preserve the entire history of the building here and symbolize a new era. The transition from old to new architecture is beautifully displayed here, and at the same time it attempts to represent the modern parliament accordingly," noted Lorenz. The most visible contemporary element is the meeting hall of the Bundesrat itself, done entirely in beige and brown colors with a glazed ceiling.
      During the tours, visitors can sit in the benches usually reserved for high-ranking politicians, and the smiling guide tries to explain the specific functioning of this legislative body to them. According to her, just the way one becomes a member is unique and has no equivalent in the world. Members are not elected to the council; instead, anyone who becomes a minister in one of the 16 German federal states automatically sits in it.
      The Bundesrat is composed of representatives of regional governments, and although it is the second chamber of the parliament, it does not approve all laws. "In general, it approves those that somehow concern the interests of the states. However, this is not absolute, and even the deputies themselves often do not have clarity until the last moment on whether the Bundesrat will vote on a particular proposal. Sometimes it depends on a single word in the law," the council's spokeswoman Camilla Linke explained the complex legislative practice in Germany. For other laws, it is enough that the second chamber does not raise objections to them, and they can thus come into effect.
      Since it is composed of state ministers and prime ministers, it generally meets only once a month. Outside of sessions, tourists can come and visit this monument. "We have a great demand, but this building cannot be visited spontaneously. Interested parties must register in advance for security reasons. We have about 70,000 visitors a year," Lorenz added and acknowledged that compared to the three million visitors a year at the Reichstag, as promoted in guidebooks, the Bundesrat is a significantly smaller tourist magnet.