Of Glass and Steel
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| free admission |
| 16 years and older |
| German |
| Ground Floor, Hall 3 |
| Part of: Palace Bar |
What was this building supposed to be? Who was it built for and what was special about it? Restaurants and a bowling alley, a large hall, a theater in the foyer, a meeting place for the People’s Chamber. The Palace of the Republic was a house of countless places. This PalastBar is all about the architecture and design of the individual locations – with a talk, pecha kucha, drinks and DJ set.
We playfully immerse ourselves in the catacombs, the small intricacies and the large steel girders of the Palace of the Republic. No building in the GDR embodied the spirit of progress and the political thinking of the powerful as much as the Palace of the Republic. Materials were brought to Berlin from all parts of the republic, and from abroad and things that had previously seemed impossible became a reality.
The result was a building that could do many things and attracted many people: straightforward, modern and visionary.
This evening’s guest is Prof. Wolf R. Eisentraut, the last living architect of the Palast from the collective around Heinz Graffunder.
This will be followed by clever and lightning-fast colleagues who will discuss the architecture and design of the palace in a Pecha Kucha format:
Silke Ihden-Rothkirch, editor and curator in the field of architectural and design history
Zsófia Kelm, art historian
Martin Maleschka, photographer, documentarist and chronicler of “Ostmoderne”, postcard collector
Oliver Sukrow, TU – Darmstadt, Department of Architectural Theory and Science
Host: Ludwig Henze, known in Berlin as the host of bingo evenings
Biographies
The architect Wolf R. Eisentraut (born 1943) was part of the collective responsible for the basic study of the Palace of the Republic in 1972/1973 and for the central section with the large foyer. He also worked as a stage designer for productions at the Theater im Palast (TiP). Appointed honorary professor in 1986 and associate professor of corporate architecture at the Technical University of Dresden in 1988. After 1990, in addition to continuing to teach, he founded an independent architectural practice in Dresden and Berlin.
Silke Ihden-Rothkirch lives and works as an author and curator in Berlin. She is a lecturer at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin and the Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle, where she teaches design history, aesthetic education and design aspects of participation, accessibility and barrier-free design. She works as a freelance editor for social organizations in the field of communication.
After studying product design and aesthetics, Silke Ihden-Rothkirch was a member of the editorial board of form+zweck – Zeitschrift für Gestaltung, co-author of Designlehren – Wege deutscher Gestaltungsausbildung (2008) and co-editor of the book Schönheit der Form. The designer Christa Petroff-Bohne and co-curator of the exhibition of the same name (Dresden 2020, Hamburg 2021). She was also involved in the exhibition project Retrotopia – Design for Socialist Spaces at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin (2023).
Zsófia Kelm studied art history, urban studies and translation studies in Vienna, Madrid and Weimar. 2022 she completed her doctorate at the Bauhaus University Weimar: Otto Bartnings »Bau(hoch)schule« (1926–1930): Entstehung, Programm, Schülerschaft und bauliches Vermächtnis. She was scholarship holder of the Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst e.V, 2022/23 she worked as a freelance art mediator for the Staatliche Museen Berlin, in 2023 she was commissioned by the Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss on the creation and reception of the Glass Flower. Since 2024 she has been a scientific volunteer at the Mies van der Rohe Haus Berlin.
Martin Maleschka born 1982 in Eisenhüttenstadt, is a photographer, documentarian and chronicler of “Eastern Modernism”. His work focuses on the architecture-related art of the GDR. Since 2005, Maleschka has been traveling from the Baltic Sea to the Ore Mountains to photograph works of art that are often acutely threatened by destruction or decay and to place them in their historical context. In 2019, he published his first comprehensive publication on the subject. Maleschka collects postcards with motifs of the GDR’s architectural heritage.
Oliver Sukrow is a research assistant at the Department of Architectural Theory and Science at the TU Darmstadt. 2018 published his doctoral thesis: Arbeit. Wohnen. Computer – Zur Utopie in der bildenden Kunst und Architektur der DDR in den 1960er Jahren. Together with the Wüstenrot Foundation, the 2020 documentation volume on the restored mural by Josep Renau in Thuringia was published. 2021 saw the publication of the anniversary volume Haus der Kultur Gera, which he edited, was honored with the DAM Architectural Book Award.