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Should Berlin protect its Soviet-era buildings?

Berlin is debating whether to protect the giant, Soviet-era, office blocks at Alexanderplatz. Some argue they are an important part of the city's history, despite being old and ugly. Should they be listed or demolished? Have your say.

Should Berlin protect its Soviet-era buildings?
Photo: DPA

Those familiar with Germany’s capital will know the long stretches of socialist architecture around the famous television tower in the centre of the former East. The senate is in the process of deciding which ones, if any, should receive protected status – meaning they can not be demolished.

The Plattenbau or prefabricated buildings were allocated in true socialist-style to different industrial sectors. For example, House of Travel, House of the Newspaper, or the House of Electro-Technology, which is identifiable by the TGL sign on its roof.

For many in the city, and indeed around the world, the buildings are an important reminder of Stalinism. They loom over Berlin reminding those below about the city’s past, and are a significant part of its character.

“The ideological and artistic side of architecture is particularly visible on the House of Travel,” conservationist from the state monuments office, Jörg Haspel, told the Tagesspiegel newspaper.

While some in Berlin’s political scene are pushing for that history to be protected, others are concerned that keeping some of the buildings could be a hindrance to the city’s development.

Keeping the particularly large TGL-topped block would “halt city development,” former Berlin senator for culture Thomas Flierl told the paper.

And if the Plattenbau were to be taken down, what would replace them? A proposed project to install 10 huge skyscrapers around Alexanderplatz was recently ditched, leaving the area wide open to ideas.

A huge swathe of other blocks were demolished to make way for the city’s oft-maligned Alexa shopping centre.

Do you think the buildings are an eyesore? And would replacing them breathe new life into the area? Or are the Plattenbau an important part of Berlin’s soul which should be protected?

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TODAY IN FRANCE

France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

France has paved the way towards paying reparations to more relatives of Algerians who sided with France in their country's independence war but were then interned in French camps.

France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

More than 200,000 Algerians fought with the French army in the war that pitted Algerian independence fighters against their French colonial masters from 1954 to 1962.

At the end of the war, the French government left the loyalist fighters known as Harkis to fend for themselves, despite earlier promises it would look after them.

Trapped in Algeria, many were massacred as the new authorities took revenge.

Thousands of others who fled to France were held in camps, often with their families, in deplorable conditions that an AFP investigation recently found led to the deaths of dozens of children, most of them babies.

READ ALSO Who are the Harkis and why are they still a sore subject in France?

French President Emmanuel Macron in 2021 asked for “forgiveness” on behalf of his country for abandoning the Harkis and their families after independence.

The following year, a law was passed to recognise the state’s responsibility for the “indignity of the hosting and living conditions on its territory”, which caused “exclusion, suffering and lasting trauma”, and recognised the right to reparations for those who had lived in 89 of the internment camps.

But following a new report, 45 new sites – including military camps, slums and shacks – were added on Monday to that list of places the Harkis and their relatives were forced to live, the government said.

Now “up to 14,000 (more) people could receive compensation after transiting through one of these structures,” it said, signalling possible reparations for both the Harkis and their descendants.

Secretary of state Patricia Miralles said the decision hoped to “make amends for a new injustice, including in regions where until now the prejudices suffered by the Harkis living there were not recognised”.

Macron has spoken out on a number of France’s unresolved colonial legacies, including nuclear testing in Polynesia, its role in the Rwandan genocide and war crimes in Algeria.

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