Germany: January 3

"Of all human arts, architecture has the greatest potential to be oppressive.  Man feels dwarfed by the things he has himself created."
-G. K. Chesterton

The first sights pointed out on a tour of any city are usually the famous buildings that are to be found there, and my introduction to Berlin was not an exception.  The Brandenburg Gate is by far the most famous edifice in the city, but we also saw may governmental  buildings in passing, such as the Reichstag.  The architectural style of many of of the old buildings in Berlin which survived the bombings of WWII are rather imposing in designs, having a facade of grey stone, a height which looms over the streets, and can be wide as a city block.

There used to be more of such buildings; the Wilhelmstrasse and Albrechtstrasse used to have palaces of Prussian nobility and royalty along it, and such are always built to impress and awe.  It is not surprising then, I suppose, that many of these buildings were later used as government offices for Imperial and later Nazi Germany.  Dictatorships especially need to awe the people, and architecture represents one of the best ways to do so; not only are big buildings impressive in their own right, but they possess an air of permanence, an assertion that they will stand forever.

As it happened, many, in fact most, did not.  Bombs from the air, and fighting from the streets were enough to ruin them, and they were subsequently demolished.  Wars and the passage of time beat at buildings like the tide upon stones, and unless efforts are made to keep them standing, they fall to ruin.

Little effort was made to preserve the architectural legacy of the third Reich, for good or for ill; that is why most of the memorials to the Holocaust are in new buildings.  Two exceptions to the story of ruin and demolition, however, are worth mentioning.
The first is the Wannsee house, where the various departments of Hitler's government met to discuss the "final solution."  It was left untouched by the war damage, and the West German Government used it as a youth hostel.  But everyone knew what it had been used for, and that legacy shrouded the place until it was finally made into the museum and center for research that it is today.  One cannot easily rid oneself of a silent witness.

The second is more prominent; the Church tower of St. Paul.  It is an exception to the above list in several ways, first and foremost in that it is a religious edifice, and not a governmental one.  In another way, while it was heavily damaged by the bombing, the citizens of Berlin would not permit it to be demolished, but to stand as an example, an anti-war memorial.  Efforts at preservation are often as strenuous, and certainly more commitment-heavy, than construction; but there is an honor to it, and it lies in this: that a people must take upon themselves the decision of what they will permit on the streets of their city, rather than merely accepting what exists.
That probably serves pretty well for a definition of democracy, now that I think about it.