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Jeden Monat nähern sich unsere Kolumnisten, die Berliner Filmemacher Dominik und Benjamin Reding, dem jeweiligen Heftthema
auf ihre ganz eigene Art und Weise. Geboren wurden die Zwillinge am 3. Ja nuar 1969 in Dortmund. Während Dominik Architektur
in Aachen und Film in Hamburg studierte, absolvierte Benjamin ein Schauspielstudium in Stuttgart. 1997 begann die Arbeit an
ihrem ersten gemeinsamen Kinofilm „Oi! Warning“. Seitdem arbeiten sie für Fernseh- und Kinofilmprojekte zusammen.

Each month our columnists, Berlin-based filmmakers Dominik and Benjamin Reding, approach the respective issue-specific
theme in their very personal way. The twins were born on January 3, 1969 in Dortmund. Whilst Dominik studied architecture
in Aachen and film in Hamburg, Benjamin graduated in acting studies in Stuttgart. They started working on their first joint
motion picture “Oi! Warning“ in 1997. Since then they have tightly collaborated for TV and cinema film projects.

An Essay by Dominik Reding
A house was demolished in Berlin-Mitte. A glass cube, with wide stairs in front musty details with gold and fine wood imitations. I also thought the building was a
west import.
and an upper level clad with limestone. 15.5 metres high, 21 metres wide and
19 metres deep. Behind high site fences, demolition machinery dug into the “For party members is was a dog house.” Peter Gohlke smiles, puts plans, files, pho-
reinforced concrete. The building had not been designed by Schlüter, not by Schinkel, tos on his desk. “They thought this was suspect, because we were so different.” We,
not by Behrens, it was not Baroque, not classicism, not Art Nouveau. It was not par- that was architect Peter Gohlke and the “Entwurfsgruppe der Kunsthochschule
ticularly conspicuous, not particularly prominent and it had not been put under Berlin-Weißensee” (design group of the Berlin-Weißensee art college). Not the unity
a preservation order. So it was not actually that bad? Well, it was. It was the best party but a civil institution, namely “Staatliche Museen Berlin“, commissioned
building of the GDR. Gohlke and his team with the planning in 1975. “We floated in the shade, beyond
Cardboard slogans, brown coal haze and a snack stand at Alexanderplatz called “The Honecker.” The group used this shade for a creative outburst, which should remain
Cold Missy”. East Berlin in 1980. We visited relatives in Treptow. Coffee and cake to be the only one in GDR architecture. “We were not allowed to travel abroad for
were followed by an excursion to the Pergamon Museum. A soot-blackened block, the planning, collect examples, only members of the Socialist Unity Party were
which could only be entered via a rusty, makeshift bridge and an improvised side allowed to do that, but we looked through magazines.” With juvenile enthusiasm the
entrance. The forecourt was an up and down of broken stone slabs, the walls were architect unrolls the yellowed design drawings. “For the connecting door between
cluttered with bullet holes from the Second old and new building we looked at ancient,
World War. And inside: hand-written notes in Greek grave doors, stone doors, which we then
German and Russian saying “Entrance” , “Exit”, translated into glass and steel, produced by a
“Ticket Office”, and the smell of “Ata” cleaning two-man locksmith’s shop in Pankow.” They
powder. 1985, again in East Berlin, again in the had to arduously fight for this otherness, the
Pergamon Museum. This time with a group of aesthetic unyieldingness. The building files
pupils. This time, everything was different. brim over with entries like: “The design of the
Well, the brown coal haze and the “Cold Missy” eaves, a serving detail that requires modesty,
at Alexanderplatz still existed, but the entrance appears over-sized and disturbs the propor-
to the Pergamon Museum was new. Very new! tions; their inexactness unreasonably influ-
The temporary bridge across the branch of the ences the entire appearance of the façade.” Or:
Spree had made way for slender concrete-gran- “The supply of the trapezoid glass panes has
ite stairs with an indirectly illuminated not been resolved. VEB Ausbau as well as the
balustrade, the broken stone chaos on the fore- Torgau flat glass works professed themselves
court had been replaced by a disciplined land- unable to produce the six glass panes.”
scape of Greek statutes, square seating ele- Ultimately, everything – counter, doors, lumi-
ments and luminous cylinders made of glass naires, information boards, even chairs and
and stainless steel and the museum entrance tables in the entrance hall – were produced by
had been moved – from the shabby corner to a Foto: Peter Gohlke und Kollektiv hand. Not many reports on the new museum
separate house in the middle of the square. building were published. Maybe GDR superiors
From the outside the new building was a calm, considered its modern design and visual mod-
confidently proportioned glass-steel construc- esty as too strange, too little prestigious. Maybe
tion, which was reminiscent of a modern temple in the building tradition of someone the desire and self-consciousness of the GDR did no longer suffice after current archi-
like Schinkel or Mies van der Rohe, while its inside showed a light, glassy-transparent tecture publications when the building was opened in 1982. And then, after the turn-
spatial structure from shining bright, marble clad stairways and four levels filled with around, it was too old, too unimportant, a remainder of this gone down state with
elegant, carefully coordinated, accurately executed details – from frameless glass its aluminium money and plastic cars. If Peter Gohlke, born in 1937, had worked in
vestibules at the entrance to curved glass panes at the ticket offices. In the basement, West Germany, he would probably be mentioned in the same breath with other per-
there were toilet facilities: illuminated in cool neon light, thousands of dark green sonalities of his generation – Kleihues, Gerkan, Kulka, Bangert, Sawade. He stayed in
mosaic tiles glittered underneath the historic vaults, all around, from the floor to the the GDR, which was not grateful to him. Shortly before the opening, a team colleague
ceiling, in a room expanded to infinity through optical illusion. Phew, something like fled to the west and the party organs took revenge. They broke up the design team
that did not even exist in West-Berlin. and transferred Peter Gohlke to a building repair firm. After the German reunifica-
The newspaper of those days reported that the GDR would secretly commission pres- tion, a competition for the conversion of the Pergamon Museum was initiated.
tige projects in the west. From design to execution. There was talk of Sweden, Japan Oswald Mathias Ungers won it. The bridge and the entrance building are replaces
and even the Federal Republic of Germany. And indeed, nothing in the new entrance with a bridge and an entrance building. “Mr Ungers liked our house, he didn’t actu-
building reminded of the architectural particularities of the GDR: no expressive con- ally wanted it to be demolished.” Peter Gohlke folds the plans and carefully puts
crete slab additions, no design brutalism re-imported from Moscow, no penchant for them back into the drawer.

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