Dhe announcement by Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth (Green Party) that the Bible inscription on the dome of the replica Berlin City Palace would be covered up with a “temporary fade” was met with protests from the Union in the Bundestag. Roth “apparently didn’t understand the inscription at all,” wrote the deputy chairwoman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group Dorothee Bär (CSU) in a statement. “If she lets them cover up now, she completely disqualifies herself from her position.”
The cultural and media policy spokeswoman for the parliamentary group, Christiane Schenderlein (CDU), said: “The Bible text on the dome of the Berlin City Palace must remain visible.” Schenderlein described it as a sufficient compromise that it was agreed that the Bible passages should be replaced by an information board in to put their context. She expressed concern that “in the next step, even the cross on the dome will be called into question.”
The text on the dome, which King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia (1795 to 1861) had combined from several sites, reads: “It is in no other salvation, . . . for in the name of Jesus, to the glory of God the Father. That at the name of Jesus all knees should bow, which are in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” Roth had already made it clear at the beginning of the year that she was critical of the text. She sees this endangering the cosmopolitanism of the Humboldt Forum housed in the reconstructed city palace.
In response to an extensive request from the Union faction, Roth announced that, as “part of the programmatic efforts to deal with the symbolism of the dome, cross and inscription”, “the implementation of an art project for the temporary superimposition of the inscription with alternative, commenting and reflecting texts”. Bär said it was not the job of the Minister of State for Culture to “rewrite history and make it fit for the current ideological character of her party”.
