History
In 1964, Walter Ulbricht, leader of the Socialist Unity Party which governed East Germany, decided to allow the construction of a television tower on Alexanderplatz, modeled on the Fernsehturm Stuttgart and the Soviets' first satellite, the Sputnik. The TV tower had several architects. Its former design was done by Hermann Henselmann, and Jörg Streitparth. It was built by the East German architects Fritz Dieter, Günter Franke and Werner Ahrendt between 1965-69. Walter Herzog, Gerhard Kosel and Herbert Aust later also took part in the planning. The construction plan though emerged already in the 1950s. The tower was actually needed for transmitting radio and TV programmes. At the same time it was intended as symbol and as a show of the GDR's strength. After some discussions regarding the tower's location it was decided to build the Fernsehturm next to Alexanderplatz, which is situated in the centre of Berlin. Construction began on August 4, 1965. After four years of construction, the Fernsehturm began test broadcasts on October 3, 1969, and it was officially inaugurated four days later on the GDR's National Day. It is among the best known sights in Berlin, and has around a million visitors every year from all over the world.
Read more about this topic: Fernsehturm Berlin
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)