The United States opened a monumental new embassy in Berlin on Friday, returning the diplomats to their rightful place, 67 years after Washington declared war on the Nazis, according to dpa. Former US president George HW Bush, the ambassador to Germany William Timken, and his wife Sue Timken together cut a ribbon to symbolically let VIP guests enter the 130-million-dollar chancery. The multi-storey building occupies a commanding site between the Holocaust Memorial and Brandenburg Gate. US diplomats had left the site in 1941. During the decades of communism, the empty land had been part of a desolate no-man's land along the Berlin Wall. After the Wall fell in 1989, wrangles over anti-terrorist barriers held up reconstruction for many years. At the celebrations, German Chancellor Angela Merkel recalled how late US president Ronald Reagan had once stood up nearby and appealed to the Soviet Union's last communist leader in Moscow: "Mr Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Germany and the United States remained firm friends, said Merkel. "We have many challenges ahead of us that we can only master together," she said. Former president Bush, father of current President George W Bush, praised Germans for reunifying their country in 1990. The people of East and West Germany had never forgotten that they were one people with one language. Recalling the fall of the Wall, one of the most dramatic events of his own presidency, he said, "It ended the division of Europe." The United States invited 4,500 people to the opening party, which was combined with US Independence Day, July 4. As evening arrived, rain fell and Berliners outside listened under umbrellas. US-style food including cheesecake and chili con carne were served in the courtyard of the pale sandstone building. An opening festival for the public was to begin Saturday in tents set up near the Brandenburg Gate. Diplomats moved several weeks ago into the building, raising the flag over the German capital's grandest address, Pariser Platz. On the other side is the Reichstag. It was the arson attack on the home of the German parliament weeks after he took power in 1933 that allowed Adolf Hitler to pass the first laws giving him dictatorial powers. The embassy architects, the Californian practice Moore Ruble Yudell, have come in for some criticism over the building with its simple sandstone facade, which fills one of the last gaps in the rebuilding of Berlin. Berlin critic Gerwin Zohlen called the building a "boring" example of a 1980s style of post-modernism that was already out of date. Inside the building, the restrained exterior gives way to splashes of colour from art on the walls and garden spaces. Abandoned by the United States in 1941, the former embassy was badly damaged in World War II and torn down by the East Berlin communist authorities in 1957. Then the Berlin Wall went up in 1961. A US embassy to East Germany was later set up in a former Prussian officers' club not far away. It had a permanent police presence outside - mainly to ensure dissidents did not slip inside to seek asylum. When the capital moved from Bonn to Berlin, this became the US embassy of the newly reunified Germany. Rebuilding on the pre-War site was held up by US security demands, which are laid down in law but were in conflict with the traditional street layout that the city authorities were determined to retain. Under a compromise, scarcely visible concrete barriers were placed on the street outside and the roadway was re-aligned so that terrorists could never approach the building with car bombs.
