90s Nostalgia: The moment Berlin was briefly perfect

In our memories, the sun shines the entire time. In our memories, we drink wine, beer, and water on balmy evenings together with many strangers from all over the world, and eat cheese, chips, and crackers. In our memories, the days in front of the wrapped Reichstag 30 years ago are among the most beautiful of the entire 1990s. The memory is not deceiving.

June 1995. For weeks, Berliners and the tourists, who were far fewer at the time, had been observing something unusual at the Reichstag. Men and women were hanging from ropes on the façade of the Wallot building, handling shimmering white and silver fabric, pulling, smoothing, stroking, almost caressing the flexible yet solid material.

Then June 24th arrives. What until now had existed as an abstract line in our minds ("The Reichstag is being wrapped") now stands before us in concrete form. The venerable symbol of Germany's still relatively young parliamentarism looks like a painstakingly wrapped birthday present. A true work of art.

The artist couple Christo and Jeanne-Claude had campaigned, argued, and worked for this moment for 25 years. Resistance came from both the public and politicians, with Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU) and his party colleague Wolfgang Schäuble, in particular, speaking out against this extreme form of art in architecture. The then President of the Bundestag, Rita Süssmuth, also a Christian Democrat but of the relaxed variety, was enthusiastic about the idea. The CDU parliamentary group in the German Bundestag ultimately voted against the idea of ​​transforming the Reichstag building into a wrap, but the majority of the Bundestag, however, was keen to try the experiment. Its opponents could pack up.

Became folk heroes: the wrapping artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, here in 2006.

Source: Friso Gentsch/dpa

In Germany, it's still part of the folklore to reject everything before extraordinary major events. A wrapped Reichstag? It's an insult to the dignity of parliament. Expo 2000 in Hanover? It'll cause traffic chaos and noise. The 2006 FIFA World Cup? Security concerns and criticism of the costs. And afterward? Almost everyone is always enthusiastic.

At that time, we were new to the still-young, yet already so ancient capital. The Wall had fallen five and a half years earlier, but polls indicated a growing lack of unity—the "wall in people's minds," as commentators increasingly described the German-German situation in the mid-1990s. The Bundestag had decided in 1991 that the old Prussian royal seat should once again be the capital of the new Germany after more than 40 years of division. In 1999, the government began its business on the Spree, but in those summer days, that was still a distant dream.

Thus, Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Reichstag in a kind of hinged time, between a no longer and a not yet. Back then, Berlin was anything but completely renovated. In Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg, and Friedrichshain, the bullet holes in the building facades still spoke of the Second World War. In the basements of these buildings, spontaneous techno clubs, pubs, and studios sprang up. Today, we would call it pop-up culture. Back then, there wasn't a need for a catchy name for everything. People just did things.

But what was so special about the situation in front of the Reichstag back then? East and West Germans celebrated together, drawing closer to one another; in those days, it didn't matter who came from where. We were there, together, with one another, without any preconceived notions. West Berlin entrepreneurs drank alongside East Berlin engineers, shoulder-padded poppers chatted with spiky-haired punks in leather jackets. Black Africans set the beat with their drums, Indians played the sitar, Americans marveled in shorts. The peoples of this world no longer just looked to this city; they came. "The world as a guest of friends" – that could have been the headline back then.

And everyone gazed at the art, at the magical trick performed by the two magicians Christo and Jeanne-Claude. With 10,000 square meters of silver fabric, they had made the historicist-neoclassical building disappear. What you can't see leaves room for thought, for imagination. That's how it was back then, too. Thoughts expanded under the largely blue skies of those days.

The artist and his work: Christo in front of the wrapped Reichstag.

Source: dpa

One might even venture to argue that the days and evenings on the steps of the Reichstag constituted the true celebration of unity. On October 3, 1990, the mood was rather subdued and routine, more a formal act of protocol amidst sausage stands and beer stalls than a boisterous celebration of the people.

Things were quite different during the 14 summer days of the Reichstag wrapping. Five million people made a pilgrimage to the old-new Berlin, which bore the scars of war and radiated hope. The Bonn Republic was no more, and the Berlin Republic was not yet. The action at the Reichstag revealed what the new country and the new Berlin could become: relaxed, liberal, welcoming, cosmopolitan, even cheerful. The world press marveled at this new face of the country in the heart of Europe. Many clichés suddenly no longer applied. And they haven't since.

Hotels were fully booked in those days. Shops were allowed to open until 10 p.m., and people on the Ku'damm were shopping like crazy, as if capitalism were about to be abolished tomorrow. Hardly anyone called it "shopping" back then. Bands like Take That ("Back for Good"), The Cranberries ("Zombie"), and Michael Jackson ("You're Not Alone," "They Don't Care About Us") provided the soundtrack to those days. However, it was still a few weeks before Oasis' second studio album, "(What's the Story) Morning Glory?", with hits like "Wonderwall" and "Don't Look Back in Anger," was released in September 1995.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude became true folk heroes during these days. When the two – he a Bulgarian born behind the Iron Curtain, she a Frenchwoman born in Casablanca, an inseparable couple, both romantically born on the same day, June 13, 1935 – signed posters, the crowd was unimaginable. Around 15,000 people wanted an autograph from the wrappers. The artist couple patiently signed for hours.

And today? Christo's nephew, Vladimir Yavachev, recently commemorated the shrouded Reichstag with an art installation, with cultural manager Peter Schwenkow involved then as now. Twenty-four high-performance projectors illuminated the west side of the parliament building between 9:30 p.m. and 1 a.m. Could this at least revive the atmosphere a little?

We take a detour to the Reichstag. That evening, Bruce Springsteen lashed out at Donald Trump in Berlin's Olympic Stadium, calling the US government "corrupt, incompetent, and deceitful" in front of an audience of 60,000. In Los Angeles and other US cities, angry people are taking to the streets to fight for democracy. In Germany, deep fractures and cracks can be observed within society. In short: Times have changed.

Remembering 1995: The Reichstag is currently illuminated with the help of a projector.

Source: Jens Kalaene/dpa

Perhaps 100 to 150 people are standing in front of the Reichstag that evening; construction fences prevent anyone from entering or directly approaching the building with its striking Norman Foster dome. A few groups of visitors are leaving the Reichstag even late. Here, people are less talking to each other than filming and taking photographs. A big difference is noticeable: in 1995, there were no cell phones – at least none with which we wanted to record every event, big and small. No smartphones, thanks to which every conversation was interrupted every few minutes by a WhatsApp message or a push notification. A conversation was, at its best, a continuous, uninterrupted process. No "Wait a minute..." in the middle of a sentence.

But wait a minute, honestly: The light installation of 2025 was unfortunately a disappointment. The columns, the inscription "To the German People," the windows—everything was visible; nothing was covered up, just projected onto it. Of course, the Reichstag in the summer of 1995 was also a projection screen for the hopes and joyful expectations of an age in which, after the "end of history" (Francis Fukuyama), liberal democracy seemed to prevail as the only conceivable form of government. But in 1995, we, the attendees, were projecting, not a projector. Added to that was our desire at the time that the open and spontaneous spirit of those founding years and of cultural openness could be preserved for the years to come. Soon, however, the bullet holes in the building facades disappeared, and with them the basement clubs and pubs.

The wrapped Reichstag was an unforgettable event. But the spirit of that era cannot be revived – especially not through a light show. Even though, to be fair, Vladimir Yavachev didn't intend the light installation to be such a resuscitation theme, the impression is nevertheless unavoidable when viewed on this June evening in Berlin.

The spectacle of the year 2025 fits perfectly with our tendency to seek refuge in the past, amidst the uncertainty of the present. Nostalgia is being exploited culturally, economically, and politically these days. Unlike in 1995, the future is no longer perceived as an open space of possibility, but as a threat.

But history cannot be repeated. Christo and Jeanne-Claude emphasized more than once: "Beauty lies in transience." At the time, they rejected an extension of their initially controversial, then celebrated art project. After two weeks, the Reichstag was unpacked again. What remained was the stuff of dreams.