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The article examines several great cities straddle rivers and Berlin is no exception. Topics include reports that the river Spree lubricates it and provides a moat around many of its cultural jewels held on its Museum Island and the city also has a highly individual history particular to its partition after the Second World War and its subsequent reunification in 1990.

This article addresses the long-term impact of colonialism on Europe's internal structures and on its self-positioning in a global context. Using the 2015 refugee crisis as a focal point and centering the German example, the author explores the complex relationship between memory discourses and visions of Germany's and Europe's postunification future. The author argues that the erasure of colonial violence from the continent's collective memory has a direct, negative impact on its ability to let go of a racialized identity that is in increasing tension with Europe's actual multiracial and multireligious composition. The article traces this dynamic around the example of the non-European collections in Berlin's Museum Island and the future Humboldt Forum, conceptualized as the world's largest "universal museum." The narratives through which this art is integrated into Europe's cultural heritage are in stark contrast to those that simultaneously defined the refugees, who arrived from the same region in which the art originated, as fundamentally different and threatening. The narratives intersect in the Multaqa initiative, which offers Arab language tours of Museum Island to refugees, and in the controversy around the site of the Humboldt Forum and the colonial art it is meant to house. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since German unification in 1990, Berlin has undergone drastic reconstruction. Remnants of the past were unearthed and vestiges of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) dismantled, as the city struggled to redefine itself in the historic city centre. This essay focuses on the Schlossplatz, a site of contentious debate about its appropriate use and aesthetic and architectural construct. The approved design is the façade of the Berlin City Palace, which will house the Humboldt Forum. The Palace suffered significant damage during allied air raids on Berlin and in 1950 the GDR demolished the remains of the structure. By 1976, the GDR had constructed the Palast der Republik [Palace of the Republic] there. In 2003, the German Government decided to raze that structure. Intended to restore a missing architectural link to the historic centre, the reconstruction of the Palace façade has been fraught with controversy. I situate the reconstruction plan within the context of architectural debates during the last 25 years. I analyse the political, social and cultural values that sparked the debates, and pose the questions: How does this reconstruction confront Berlin’s historical legacies? What does a Palace symbolize? What influence will the reconstruction have on other remembrance projects in the city centre? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]