The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin

Whether you have ever visited Berlin or not, the chances are good that you will easily recognize this historic structure with the twelve Doric columns which terminates the Unter den Linden Boulevard on Berlin's Pariser Platz. The Brandenburg Gate (Der Brandenburger Tor) is a triumphal arch in the tradition of other famous arches like France's Arc de Triumph and holds an extraordinary place and broad symbolic value in modern Germany.

For one thing, it typifies Berlin's long architectural history of classicism. Modest in scale, it is the last remaining gate of a series of gates which once marked the largest avenues into the city. These city gates constituted the passages through the so-called customs wall which encircled the city at the end of the eighteenth century. It was commissioned by Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm II in 1788 and its design was based upon an ancient Greek gateway to the Acropolis in Athens called the Propylea. Just as the Propylaea led to a shrine of the Ancient world, the Brandenburg Gate was meant to lead to the most important city of Prussia.

It was the first neo-classical structure to be built in Berlin. This style soon predominated here, however. And this was primarily due to the prodigious works of the famous neo-classicist architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Berliners had even come to refer to their city as the "Athens on the Spree", this also being a reference to the river Spree which passes through Berlin.

The twelve Doric columns, six on each side, create five passageways through the gate. It stands 65 feet high, is 213 feet wide and 36 feet thick and crowned by the Quadriga statue, the goddess of peace, driving here four-horse chariot toward the East. After having conquered Berlin, Napoleon took the Quadriga to Paris in 1806. When it was later returned to Berlin, the goddess of peace now became the goddess of victory. German troupes marched through the gate on their way to battle during World War I. And Hitler didn't hesitate to misuse the gate to symbolize his power during the reign of terror. It was the last structure left standing on Pariser Platz when World War II came to an end.

But the Brandenburg Gate is not only a trademark of Berliner classicism or "old" German history, of course. It is perhaps best remembered as standing watch between East and West in a city surrounded by the Berlin Wall for thirty years. It was seen throughout the world over as being a symbol for division and ideological conflict in a world divided between the two superpowers. And this open German question remained open for as long as the Brandenburg Gate remained closed.

The Berlin Wall did of course fall in 1989 and when it did, the gate suddenly came to symbolize something new; freedom for those who had been just beyond its reach for all those many years. And it has become above all else the symbol of a united Germany.

Newly refurbished, The Brandenburg Gate has also become the de facto symbol of the German capital and modern Germany itself. And today, here in the center of Europe, in a world that is globalizing, it also stands for a continent that is unifying.