ABSTRACT
Schwippert's project was conceived at the Nullstunde, or Zero Hour, of post-war culture when German artists attempted to discover new metaphors and symbols for their work not based in the past, but in the present and the future. Each building embodies ideas about German political identity in a manner peculiar to German architecture; by using physical and spatial transparency to allude to the new democracy and its transparent qualities - openness, egalitarianism, honesty, popular participation, and fragility. Since the end of World War II, Germany has completed three national parliament buildings: Hans Schwippert's Bundeshaus and Giinter Behnisch's Bundeshaus in Bonn, and Sir Norman Foster's Reichstag in Berlin. The images of Germany as a fatherland, an economic and military world power led by an elite corps of perfect men, were jettisoned in favour of a new image of an open, pluralistic, democratic Germany. Grass has explored other metaphors related to German guilt and national identity. Schwippert himself uses gender metaphor.
