In June 1991, the Bundestag in Bonn decided to move the seat of parliament and government to Berlin. After the unification of the Federal Republic and the GDR, the members of parliament wanted to take up the fact that Berlin had been the German capital until 1945. But the inner city had become a different one due to war and division. A lot had disappeared; there was plenty of space to start over and reshape the city.
New government buildings were supposed to be built near the Reichstag building close to the Spree. The foundations of never completed gigantic buildings of the National Socialists were still in the ground in this area. And this was also where the Wall ran. Now a ribbon of buildings of the same height and width was to extend over 1.5 kilometres and connect East and West. On one side, it consisted of houses with offices of members of parliament, on the other of the Federal Chancellery and in between a citizens’ forum. The buildings were to represent democratic order and its institutions. This was how Axel Schultes and Charlotte Frank envisioned their "Band des Bundes", in English Federal Ribbon. They won the urban planning competition for the reorganisation of the so called Spreebogen, an area, where the river Spree runs in a wide arc.
Nevertheless, instead of a continuous ribbon of buildings, a Chancellery was built from 1997 to 2001, which towered overhead and no longer fit into the Band des Bundes. The Citizens' Forum was initially postponed until it finally fell victim to traffic management and concerns about the safety of government buildings. The Swiss Embassy, the last remaining historic building in the Spreebogen, also disrupted the plans. Architect Schultes: "The heart of the whole project is missing. The sovereign, the people, have no place!"
The completed Federal Chancellery is one of the largest government headquarters in the world. The first head to move in, Gerhard Schröder, was then also bothered by the size of the building. When moving in, he said: "What judgement people will one day form about this chancellery, will also depend first and foremost on the policies, on the style of the government, of our government, but also of future governments."
