Original Dome
The original Reichstag building was proposed due to a need for a larger parliamentary building. Construction did not immediately begin due to debates between Otto von Bismarck and Reichstag members. In 1894, after an architectural contest, the winner, Frankfurt architect Paul Wallot, was chosen to design the building, which featured a very large dome.
On February 27, 1933, the dome was destroyed along with the rest of the building in the Reichstag fire, an act blamed on the Communists, despite there being little evidence to determine who actually started the fire. The remains of the building and the dome were further demolished with the bombings of Berlin through World War II and the eventual fall of Berlin to the Soviets in 1945. While the Reichstag building was partially reconstructed in the 1960s as a conference center, the dome was not. Much of the dome and the ornaments that decorated it had been removed by that time.
Read more about this topic: Reichstag Dome
Famous quotes containing the words original and/or dome:
“The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Drab Habitation of Whom?
Tabernacle or Tomb—
Or Dome of Worm—
Or Porch of Gnome—
Or some Elf’s Catacomb?”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)