The Fat Chicken

On Tuesday we had a tour of the Reichstag, the building which houses the German parliament, or Bundestag. Definitely a cool experience for me, since studying the German political system last year was my first experience with understanding consensus/parliamentary-style democracy, which I found really fascinating to compare to our majoritarian/presidential-style system in the U.S. One thing I did notice arcitecturaly was the obvious attempt to avoid anything that could possibly construed as nationalistic. In the Capitol building in Washington D.C., for example, it seems like every square inch of space is occupied by a painting commemorating some famous battle or treaty signing, or a bust of some famous dead white guy. In the Reichstag, the decor is all modern: stainless steel, bland blue uphostrey, not a bust or painting in sight. Check out the winged creature in the background of the photo below: it's supposed to be an eagle, the German national symbol, but in an effort to avoid a re-creation of the war-like symbol of the Third Reich, the government commissioned an artist to redesign a kinder, gentler feathered friend. The result is a cartoon-like avifauna the Germans affectionately refer to as the "fat chicken." Another interesting sign that Germany is still very much in the process of discovering it's modern identity.