Friedrichswerder is one of Berlin’s smallest neighborhoods and a decent jogger could run through this narrow quarter in five minutes. And in doing so, he or she would be struck by one of the most modern collections of buildings in Europe, comprising cutting-edge and sometimes extremely architecturally accomplished buildings adjoining new hotels or larger residential buildings. None of this existed prior to the 1990s, and in the years following the collapse of the GDR the dreams of many architects were realized here in an anarchically diverse set of buildings.
Across the way stands the German Federal Foreign Office, an architectural peculiarity that you could only find in Berlin. This long, varied and historically interesting building complex starts at Leipziger Strasse to the south with a functional GDR-era bureaucratic building. Then comes the former Reichsbank building, a typical Nazi-era building reflecting the totalitarianism of the times. To the north is the modern Foreign Office building, which terminates the complex with a large, gate-like portal to this castle of bureaucracy which is consciously modern, consciously permits a view of the interior, and consciously breaks with the past. History in stone, concrete, and glass.
