THE BRANDENBURG GATE: A WONDERFUL SIGN OF PEACE

Brandenburg column and Parisian place, 1930

The Brandenburg Gate, Brandenburger Tor in German, is an 18th-century neoclassical monument in Berlin, and one of the best-known landmarks of Germany. It is built on the site of a former city gate that marked the start of the road from Berlin to the town of Brandenburg an der Havel.

It is located in the western part of the city centre of Berlin within Mitte, at the junction of Unter den Linden and Ebertstraße, immediately west of the Pariser Platz. One block to the north stands the Reichstag building, which houses the German parliament, the Bundestag. The gate is the monumental entry to Unter den Linden, the renowned boulevard of linden trees, which led directly to the royal City Palace of the Prussian monarchs.

It was commissioned by King Frederick William II of Prussia as a sign of peace and built by architect Carl Gotthard Langhans from 1788 to 1791. 

More information: Berlin.de

The Brandenburg Gate was not part of the old fortifications, but one of 18 gates within the Berlin Customs Wall erected in the 1730s, including the old fortified city and many of its then suburbs. The gate consists of 12 Doric columns, six to each side, forming five passageways. Citizens originally were allowed to use only the outermost two on each side. Atop the gate is a Quadriga, a chariot drawn by four horses. 

Napoleon in Berlin by Charles Meynier

The gate's design is based upon the Propylaea, the gateway to the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, and is consistent with Berlin's history of architectural classicism, first, Baroque, and then neo-Palladian. The gate was the first Athens on the River Spree by architect Carl Gotthard von Langhans. The capital Quadriga was sculpted by Johann Gottfried Schadow.

The Brandenburg Gate has played different political roles in German history. After the 1806 Prussian defeat at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, Napoleon was the first to use the Brandenburg Gate for a triumphal procession and took its Quadriga to Paris.

After Napoleon's defeat in 1814 and the Prussian occupation of Paris by General Ernst von Pfuel, the Quadriga was restored to Berlin. It was now redesigned by Karl Friedrich Schinkel for the new role of the Brandenburg Gate as a Prussian triumphal arch; the goddess, now definitely Victoria, was equipped with the Prussian eagle and Iron Cross on her lance with a wreath of oak leaves.

More information: History.com

When a much larger Berlin was partitioned after World War II, the central borough of the city fell into the Soviet sector, adjoining the British sector at the Brandenburg Gate.

The fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989

Following Germany's surrender and the end of the war, the governments of East Berlin and West Berlin restored it in a joint effort. The holes were patched, but were visible for many years following the war.

Vehicles and pedestrians could travel freely through the gate, located in East Berlin, until the Berlin Wall was built, 13 August 1961. Then one of the eight Berlin Wall crossings was opened on the eastern side of the gate, usually not open for East Berliners and East Germans, who from then on needed a hard-to-obtain exit visa. On 14 August, West Berliners gathered on the western side of the gate to demonstrate against the Berlin Wall, among them West Berlin's governing Mayor Willy Brandt, who had spontaneously returned from a federal election campaigning tour in West Germany earlier on the same day.

More information: Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate

Under the pretext that Western demonstrations required it, the East closed the checkpoint at the Brandenburg Gate the same day, until further notice, a situation that was to last until 22 December 1989. The wall was erected as an arc just west of the gate, cutting off access from West Berlin. 

During the post-war Partition of Germany, the gate was isolated and inaccessible immediately next to the Berlin Wall. The area around the gate was featured most prominently in the media coverage of the tearing down of the wall in 1989, and the subsequent German reunification in 1990.

Throughout its existence, the Brandenburg Gate was often a site for major historical events and is today considered not only as a symbol of the tumultuous history of Europe and Germany, but also of European unity and peace.

Ich habe es noch in diesem Sommer: Berlin wird leben, 

und die Mauer wird fallen.

I wrote it down again this summer: Berlin will live and the Wall will fall.

Former major of Berlin and chancellor or Germany Willy Brandt at the West Berlin city hall Rathaus Schöneberg, on November 10th 1989, one day after the first East-Berliners passed the border between East and West-Berlin.