Setting Off / Breaking Down
{{ time.start_TS | TS2dateFormat('MMM') }}
{{ time.start_TS | TS2dateFormat('YYYY') }}
| Admission: Free Entry |
| Which languages: German |
| Venue: Mechanical Arena in the Foyer |
In 1989/90, crucial developments of the democratic transformation in East Germany focussed at two locations in Berlin. To begin with at the Zentraler Runder Tisch (Central Round Table) at Schönhausen Palace in Pankow. From December 1989 to March 1990, representatives of citizens’ movements and political parties met there to discuss a new political beginning.
After the free election of the Volkskammer (People’s Chamber) of 18 March 1990, the parliamentary chamber in the Palace of the Republic became the central venue for political debate. It was here that the first democratically elected parliament of the GDR convened, sought its own path forward, and voted in favour of the accession to the Federal Republic of Germany. The chamber itself disappeared with the demolition of the Palace of the Republic.
On the occasion of Berlin Freedom Week 2026, SITE SPECIFICS and the installation „Sturzlage“ draw attention to these focal points of the Peaceful Revolution.
Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper, one of the most distinguished voices in Berlin’s debates of remembrance, explores in her lecture the history and significance of these two places. She asks why their stories are so rarely told today and how the democratic legacy of the Zentraler Runder Tisch and the freely elected Volkskammer remains relevant today.
Participants
Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper is an art historian. From 1988 to 2002, she worked as conservationist at the Berlin State Heritage Office. Subsequently she taught as Professor of Heritage Conservation and Urban Cultural Heritage at the TU Berlin until 2021. She was and is an active voice in numerous controversial urban debates: about the Berlin Wall, the Neue Wache on Unter den Linden, the Palace of the Republic, the reconstruction of the Berlin Palace, as well as on figurative monuments of the GDR history, and on post-war modernist architecture in East and West Berlin. She has published numerous articles on these topics. From 2016 to 2021, she was spokeswoman for the Berlin-Weimar DFG Research Training Group „Identity and Heritage“. Through her installation „Sturzlage“, firstly presented in 2019 and subsequently exhibited at several contexts, she commemorates the significance of the Zentraler Runder Tisch for the democratic transformation of 1989/90.