Prussian palace reborn in Berlin?

Symbols of old East Germany are hard to find: Checkpoint Charlie is now a museum

BERLIN, Germany -- The building where East Germany decided to re-unify with the west may be flattened and replaced with a reconstruction of the Prussian palace demolished by the Communists.

The German Democratic Republic's parliament building has sat awkwardly in Germany's revamped capital since reunification almost 12 years ago, and some want it demolished.

A body known as the "Schlossplatz Commission" has been considering its future for more than a year and will give its final verdict on Wednesday.

The indications so far is that the commission will support recreating the old 15-century palace.

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The decision would he hugely controversial, leaving many East Germans lamenting the loss of yet another symbol of their former way of life and presenting the government with a financial headache ahead of elections in September. The cost of the reconstruction is put at 770 million euros ($688 million).

The palace, built in 1443, became the seat of Prussia's monarchs in the 18th century. It was destroyed in 1950 by the GDR's first Communist leader, Walter Ulbricht, who called it "a decadent symbol of Prussia's militaristic past."

The recommendation will come just a day before the ex-communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) enters Berlin's city government for the first time, and the PDS deputy leader has voiced deep reservations about the plans.

"Berlin defines itself as an open city of culture, scholarship and democracy. Such integral characteristics cannot be confined within a palace," Petrau Pau told Reuters.

Communist leader Ulbricht ordered the former royal palace torn down in 1950

The PDS politician designated to be new Culture Senator in Berlin, Thomas Flierl, is already known and feared by leading figures on the Berlin cultural scene as a man nostalgic for the old East Germany.

If the parliament building is demolished, the city will also lose the "People's Palace," a cultural centre in the parliament complex that is another reminder of Berlin's communist era.

The centre, containing restaurants, galleries and a theatre, would disappear, but some of the current interiors might be retained inside the rebuilt Prussian palace.

Lieselotte Schulz, head of an association which has collected 100,000 signatures in support of the renovation of the "People's Palace," was unimpressed by the commission's plans.

"We don't have a king, we're a republic -- rebuilding the palace is nonsense," she told Reuters.