Potsdam City Palace - Potsdamer Stadtschloss - Reconstruction

The reconstruction of the Potsdamer Stadtschloss is not a singular incident but part of a larger trend in the reunited Germany of the past two decades. (C.f. Berlin's decision to rebuild its city palace). "In particular, the architects are to blame," the journalist and former politician Alexander Gauland writes. "After they squandered the Bauhaus legacy in soulless box architecture in the West and no-less-soulless Eastern-bloc slab construction, everyone is pressing for reconstruction. From the historic Zeil in Frankfurt to the Dresden Frauenkirche, to the Berlin & Potsdam city-palaces, citizens are calling for the restoration of the old, since the modern cannot provide a sense of home."


The palace's absense left a formless void in the middle of Potsdam's city center. In the mid 1990s, the Prince of Wales put together an Urban Task Force to study the city in terms of traditional urban design and architecture and recommended rebuilding much of the lost structures of the Old Market. This included constructing a new stadtschloss on the outline of the old one, but to a new design in a traditional style. While the proposals of the Prince of Wales's Urban Task Force initiated much debate and discussion, the old palace's Fortuna Gate was restored in 2000-2001 with funds donated by the television host Günter Jauch (of the old Hanseatic family of Jauch).