Parliament of Trees against War and Violence
Parliament of Trees against War and Violence, 2022 © Berlin Wall Foundation
The “Parliament of Trees” is a memorial site for those who died at the Berlin Wall. Artist Ben Wagin created it in 1990 on the former border strip. The installation, consisting of trees, memorial stones, artifacts from the border fortifications, images, and texts, was designed by various artists. The names of 258 people who died at the Wall are inscribed on granite slabs.
The segments of the rear barrier wall, designed as a memorial, are only partially in situ, that is, at their original location. The “Parliament of Trees” had to be scaled down to make way for the construction of the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus, which houses the German Bundestag Library.
The installation in the Bundestag building consists of original Wall segments, which Ben Wagin has inscribed with the years and the numbers of Wall victims identified in each respective year. In the basement of the library, they indicate the former course of the barrier wall. Berlin Senator for Urban Development Ingeborg Junge-Reyer and Bundestag President Wolfgang Thierse opened the memorial site to the public in September 2005 as the “Wall Memorial in the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus.”
The Schiffbauerdamm promenade runs from the Marschallbrücke, where the border wall once stood, to the Kronprinzenbrücke, which was destroyed during World War II and never rebuilt. The reconstruction of the Kronprinzenbrücke based on a design by architect Santiago Calatrava was one of the first bridges connecting East and West Berlin after the fall of the Wall in 1989/90.
The depiction of the former border course is often confusing in this area: The political border between East and West Berlin—which was a matter of life and death for refugees—ran along the southern bank of the Spree on the side of the Reichstag building. The GDR leadership, however, had the above-ground barrier wall constructed on the (northern) bank.