Berlin palace square as a special "place of memory" in German history

The article considers the Palace Square of Berlin as a “place of memory”, where the dismantled Palace of the Republic of the GDR period and the imperial palace of the Hohenzollern dynasty, reconstructed in our day, manifest a change in attitude to German history. The destruction of one architectural complex and the erection of another, as the author shows, is connected with the “rewriting” of collective memories, using the palimpsest mechanism, when old memories are replaced by new ones. However, they do not disappear without a trace. The author shows that the official formulas of “reconciliation with oneself” and “returning to the bosom of German history”, symbolized by the re-created Hohenzollern Palace, are euphemisms concealing the cultural self-alienation of former GDR citizens. Thus, in the official discourse of the cultural memory of the Germans, the attitude towards the GDR, as an anomaly and defect in German history, is asserted.