The Parliament of Trees

The Parliament of Trees is a small memorial along the former Berlin Wall strip directly on the Spree between the Bundestag and the Chancellery, created on 9 November 1990 by the action artist Ben Wagin. Wagin planted 58 trees and erected 16 original Wall segments painted with the names of the 258 documented victims of the Berlin Wall; each tree stands symbolically for one person and for the years the city was divided. Granite plaques carry quotations from Adorno, Willy Brandt and others, and stones from former concentration camps are set into the ground. When the Marie-Elisabeth-Lueders-Haus was built in 2003 the installation had to be split; the wall segments with the names also stand inside the Bundestag library. The site has been heritage-protected since 2017 and remains an unusually quiet, almost hidden refuge in the middle of the government quarter.