Neue Wache - Berlin
The Royal Guard House by Schinkel, 1818. For 100 years the palace guards were based here but in 1918 the royal family left Germany so the building changed. It became the memorial to the First World War. Then it became a Nazi memorial to the Victims of War and Bolshevism and then it became a communist memorial to the Victims of Militarism and Fascism - in spite of which they had armed guards goose-stepping up and down in front and they put an ‘eternal flame’ and hammers and sickles inside.
Today it is still a memorial - the main German Memorial to the Victims of War and Tyranny. Inside is a sculpture by local artist Käthe Kollwitz. It shows a mother with her dead son in her arms and Kollwitz’ own son died in the First World War and her husband and grandson died in the Second.
Buried underneath are the remains of an unknown German soldier and a victim of a concentration camp along with soil from the different battlefields and camps of WW2.