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Neue Wache

Berlin, Germany
Artificial Lighting

Architect:
Karl Friedrich Schinkel
Image:
Ansgar Koreng CC BY-SA
2017

The Neue Wache (English: New Guardhouse) is a listed building on Unter den Linden boulevard in the historic centre of Berlin. Erected from 1816 to 1818 according to plans by Karl Friedrich Schinkel as a guardhouse for the Royal Palace and a memorial to the Liberation Wars, it is considered as a major work of Prussian Neoclassical architecture. After German reunification, the Neue Wache was again rededicated in 1993, as the „Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Dictatorship.“ At the personal suggestion of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the GDR memorial piece was removed and replaced by an enlarged version of Käthe Kollwitz‘s sculpture Mother with her Dead Son.