Neue Wache

Located at the Unter den Linden boulevard in central Berlin, Neue Wache is a guard house that was originally constructed for the Palace of the Crown Prince, which was located nearby. Its construction was ordered by King Friedrich Wilhelm III and would house the troops for the Prince.

Built between 1816 and 1818, the structure was designed by famed German architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who would go on to become the most noted neoclassical architect in Prussia. Neue Wache was his first major project in Berlin and is considered one of the best neoclassical buildings in the city.

The building continued to serve as a guard house until after World War I and the subsequent fall of the German monarchy in 1918.

Doric columns grace the front of Neue Wache, not unlike a classical Greek Doric temple. Actually, Schinkel intended it to resemble a Roman castrum, a fortified military camp that housed soldiers and their equipment during times that they were not in battle. The building, in accordance with the architect’s design, was “free on all sides…with four sturdier corner towers and an inner courtyard.”

The building's doric columns are topped by a frieze decorated with bas-reliefs of the goddess of victory. The pidement on top of the frieze features a tympanum made up of sculptures with allegorical figures representing Battle, Victory, Flight and Defeat.

In 1931, however, Schinkel’s design would change. At that time, architect Heinrich Tessenow was commissioned by the government to redesign the building. It would now be a memorial for German soldiers killed in World War I, with one large interior memorial hall and an oculus (circular skylight). Unfortunately, Tessenow’s design was heavily damaged at the end of World War II.

In 1960, the building – now located inside the communist-run German Democratic Republic - was repaired and reopened and was then proclaimed a Memorial to the Victims of Fascism and Militarism. An eternal flame was lit in the center of the hall and remains of an unknown German soldier and an unknown concentration camp victim were placed inside as well.

A few years after Germany was reunified in 1991, the monument was rededicated yet again. It now stands as the "Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Tyranny." A single statue replaced the flame. Dubbed “Mother with her Dead Son”, the sculpture was designed by Käthe Kollwitz and sits directly under the skylight.