The Brandenburg Gate (German: Brandenburger Tor [ˈbʁandn̩ˌbʊʁɡɐ ˈtoːɐ̯] ⓘ) is an 18th-century neoclassical monument in Berlin, Germany. One of the best-known landmarks of the country, it was erected on the site of a former city gate that marked the start of the road from Berlin to Brandenburg an der Havel, the former capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg. The current structure was built from 1788 to 1791 by orders of King Frederick William II of Prussia, based on designs by the royal architect Carl Gotthard Langhans. The bronze sculpture of the quadriga crowning the gate is a work by the sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow.
The Brandenburg Gate is located in the western part of the city centre within Mitte, at the junction of Unter den Linden and Ebertstraße. The gate dominates the Pariser Platz to the east, while to the immediate west it opens onto the Platz des 18. März beyond which the Straße des 17. Juni begins. One block to the north stands the Reichstag building, home to the German parliament (Bundestag), and further to the west is the Tiergarten inner-city park. The gate also forms the monumental entry to Unter den Linden, which leads directly to the former City Palace of the Prussian monarchs (now housing the Humboldt Forum museum), and Berlin Cathedral.
Throughout its existence, the Brandenburg Gate was often a site for major historical events. After World War II and during the Cold War, until its fall in 1989, the Berlin Wall obstructed the gateway, and was for almost three decades a marker of the city's division. Since German reunification in 1990, it has been considered not only a symbol of the tumultuous histories of Germany and Europe, but also of European unity and peace.
Description
The central portion of the gate draws from the tradition of the Roman triumphal arch, although in style it is one of the first examples of Greek Revival architecture in Germany. The gate is supported by twelve fluted Doric columns, six to each side, forming five passageways. There are also walls between the pairs of columns at front and back, decorated with classicizing reliefs of the Labours of Hercules. Citizens were originally allowed to use only the outermost two passageways on each side. Its design is based on the Propylaea, the gateway to the Acropolis of Athens, which also had a front with six Doric columns, though these were topped by a triangular pediment.
The central portion is flanked by L-shaped wings on either side, at a lower height, but using the same Doric order. Next to, and parallel with, the gate these are open "stoas", but the longer sides, stretching beyond the east side, have buildings set back from the columns. These are called "custom houses" for the Berlin Customs Wall, which was in force until 1860, or "gatehouses".
The Doric order of the gate mostly, but not entirely, follows Greek precedents, which had recently become much better understood by the publication of careful illustrated records. The Greek Doric does not have bases to the columns, and the fluting here follows the Greek style for Ionic and Corinthian columns, with flat fillets rather than sharp arrises between the flutes, and rounded ends to the top and bottom of flutes. The entablature up to the cornice follows Greek precedent, with triglyphs, guttae, metopes, and mutules, except that there are half-metopes at the corners, the Roman rather than Greek solution to the "Doric corner conflict". The 16 metopes along each of the long faces have scenes from Greek mythology in relief; many echo the Parthenon in showing centaurs fighting men. Statues in niches at the furthest side wall of Minerva and Mars were added in the 19th century.
After an attic storey that is plain apart from wide steps at the sides receding in both directions, leading, on the east side only, to a large allegorical relief of the Triumph of Peace, the figures mostly women and children. Above this there is a second cornice, with a projecting central section. On top of this is a "bronze" sculptural group by Johann Gottfried Schadow of a quadriga—a chariot drawn by four horses—driven by a goddess figure. This was initially intended to represent Eirene, the Greek goddess of peace, but after the Napoleonic Wars was rebranded as Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory, and given an Iron Cross standard with a crowned Imperial eagle perched on top, rather than a wreath. This faces into the city centre. It is the first quadriga group to be made since antiquity, made from copper sheets hammered in moulds; fortunately these moulds were kept, as they would be used more than once to renew the sculpture.
The side wings have plain metopes, and simple angled roofs, ending in gable pediments with a small circular relief in the tympanum.
History
Previous gates
In the time of King Frederick William I (1688), shortly after the Thirty Years' War and a century before today's Brandenburg Gate was constructed, Berlin was a small walled city within a star fort with several named gates: Spandauer Tor, St. Georgen Tor, Stralower Tor, Cöpenicker Tor, Neues Tor, and Leipziger Tor (see map). Relative peace, a policy of religious tolerance, and status as capital of the Kingdom of Prussia facilitated the growth of the city. With the construction of Dorotheenstadt around 1670 and its inclusion in Berlin's city fortifications, a first gate was built on the site, approximately at the level of today's Schadowstraße, consisting of a breach through the raised wall and a drawbridge over the dug moat.
With the expansion of Dorotheenstadt to the west and the construction of the Berlin Customs Wall (German: Akzisemauer) in 1734, the latter of which enclosed the old fortified city and many of its then suburbs, a predecessor of today's Brandenburg Gate was built by the Court Architect Philipp Gerlach as a city gate on the road to Brandenburg an der Havel. The gate system consisted of two Baroque pylons decorated with pilasters and trophies, to which the gate wings were attached. In addition to the ornamental gate, there were simple passages for pedestrians in the wall, which were decorated with ornamental vases at this point.
18th-century reconstruction
Frederick William II of Prussia was in his early forties when he came to the throne in 1786. He was determined to establish his capital of Berlin as a cultural centre. The military triumphs of his uncle Frederick the Great had made the Kingdom of Prussia a power that could not be ignored in European politics, but Berlin lacked the monuments and cultural life of Vienna, Paris or London. His uncle's tastes had been those typical of his generation, drawing on French classicism and English Palladianism, and his Brandenburg Gate in Potsdam (1770–71) was a much smaller monument, poised between Rococo and a Roman-influenced Neoclassical architecture.
Frederick William II summoned new German architects to Berlin, including Carl Gotthard Langhans from the city of Breslau (today Wrocław in Poland), who was appointed director of the "Oberhofbauamt" (Royal Office of Works) in 1788. Though he had designed many Neoclassical buildings, this was his first significant work in the Greek style, and his last major one; by 1792 he had designed a small neo-Gothic building for the New Garden in Potsdam. The gate was the first element of a "new Athens on the river Spree" by Langhans.
The gate was originally called "Friedenstor" (Peace Gate) and unceremoniously opened to traffic in August 1791 before its construction had been completed. It celebrated a Prussian military intervention in the Netherlands, supported by the British and the Dutch court. It had met with little resistance, restored the Dutch king (Frederick William's brother-in-law) to power, and resulted in a state treaty between Great Britain, Prussia, and the Netherlands.
19th and early 20th centuries
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 then 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.
The quadriga faces east, as it did when it was originally installed in 1793. Only the royal family was allowed to pass through the central archway, as well as members of the Pfuel family, from 1814 to 1919. The Kaiser granted this honour to the family in gratitude to Ernst von Pfuel, who had overseen the return of the quadriga to the top of the gate. In addition, the central archway was also used by the coaches of ambassadors on the single occasion of their presenting their letters of credence to council.
After 1900, due to weathering and environmental damage, smaller and larger pieces of stone began to fall from the gate. Comprehensive renovation work began in 1913, which had to be interrupted by the outbreak of World War I and was not completed until 1926. Meanwhile, the events of the November Revolution had led to further significant damage, particularly to the quadriga. Indeed, the gate was used as a firing position by government troops during both the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 and the Kapp Putsch in March 1920. The restoration work was carried out on site under the direction of Kurt Kluge. For this purpose, the quadriga was encased in a wooden structure. Berliners spoke of the "highest horse stable in Berlin", but regardless of the weather, the work could be carried out in the dry without any delay. The numerous sandstone reliefs were restored and partially renovated under the artistic direction of Wilhelm Wandschneider, who remodeled one of the centaur metopes with a different motif.
Nazi Germany and World War II
When the Nazis ascended to power, they used the gate as a party symbol. As part of Berlin's transformation into the so-called "world capital Germania", the gate was located on the east–west axis. A seven-kilometer-long section between the Brandenburg Gate and Adolf-Hitler-Platz (today Theodor-Heuss-Platz) was extended and put into operation in 1939. During the further expansion of the east–west axis, which never materialised, one of the plans was to move the side porticos away from the Brandenburg Gate. Traffic would then have been routed not only through, but also around the gate.
The gate survived World War II and was one of the damaged structures still standing in the Pariser Platz ruins in 1945 (another being the Academy of Fine Arts). The gate was badly damaged with holes in the columns from bullets and nearby explosions. One horse's head from the original quadriga survived, and is today kept in the collection of the Märkisches Museum. Efforts to disguise the government district of Berlin and confuse Allied bombers had included the construction of a replica Brandenburg Gate located away from the city centre.
Cold War
After Germany's surrender at the end of World War II, the Brandenburg Gate stood in the Soviet occupation zone, directly adjacent to the British sector. This boundary later became the border between East and West Berlin. Initially, the Flag of the Soviet Union was raised atop the monument. On 17 June 1953, amid the East German uprising of 1953, three men scaled the gate, removed the Soviet flag, and hoisted the black-red-gold flag shared by both German states. One of these men, Wolfgang Panzer, went missing shortly after and likely paid for the action with his life. Despite this turmoil, the standard black, red, and gold tricolour flag flew from the Brandenburg Gate from 1949 until 1959, serving as a shared symbol before East Germany altered its design.
On 21 September 1956, the East Berlin magistrate decided to restore the damaged monument, which was the only surviving city gate. Despite fierce arguments and mutual accusations, East and West Berlin collaborated on the project. Workers patched the structural holes, though the repairs remained visible for years. The quadriga was entirely recreated using a 1942 plaster cast. Sculptor Otto Schnitzer and the traditional Hermann Noack foundry in Friedenau completed the reconstruction, and the restoration finished on 14 December 1957. The Iron Cross atop the quadriga was replaced with a wreath, reflecting the original design. On 7 October 1959, the Flag of East Germany was raised on the roof to mark the 10th anniversary of the country's founding.
Vehicles and pedestrians could travel freely through the gate until the day after construction began on the Berlin Wall on Barbed Wire Sunday, 13 August 1961. After constructing the initial wall, the East German government had planned to demolish the gate as a symbol of Prussian militarism; however those plans were later abandoned. West Berliners gathered on the western side of the gate to demonstrate against the Berlin Wall, among them West Berlin's mayor, Willy Brandt, who had returned from a federal election campaign tour in West Germany earlier the same day. The wall passed directly by the western side of the gate, closing it throughout the Berlin Wall period, which ended on 22 December 1989. The Iron Cross returned after German reunification, and remains in place today.