User:Sonja Tineke/sandbox/Australian Embassy (GDR)

The Australian Embassy "at" the German Democratic Republic (GDR) (a formulation which acknowledged the unclear legal status of Berlin at the time ) was the seat of Australia's diplomatic mission to East Germany from 1973 to 1986. As of April 2017, the building houses the Atelierhaus Australische Botschaft (Ost), a studio house with over 30 artists.

Architecture
In order to accommodate a swathe of new diplomatic missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the East German government commissioned around 140 prefabricated structures to be were specially constructed in two new diplomatic quarters in Berlin's borough Pankow.

Australia was granted the GDR’s largest prefabricated model: the IHB-III (Ingenieur-Hochbau-Berlin III), with a surface area of 2428,8 square metres. Its architect, Horst Bauer (1928-), also designed Berlin’s iconic Café Moskau (1964) on Karl Marx Allee. The long, low-lying three-storey building, built from pre-fabricated concrete slabs, contains screen and mosaic elements by renowned ceramicist Hedwig Bollhagen (1907-2001), commissioned under Germany’s ‘Kunst-am-Bau’ (‘art-in-architecture’) programme. Like other capitalist nation-states, Australia was granted a 99-year rental contract to the site and charged accordingly for its use. Unlike other embassies, the Australian embassy garden also includes a tennis court.

The IHB-III model was ultimately built only twice: for Australia and Iraq. The Iraqi embassy is located close by and is in very bad repair, having been abandoned since 1990.

1973-1986
The building and its adjoining garden and tennis court are products of Australia’s recognition of the GDR on the 22nd of December, 1972, just one day after the Basic Treaty (Grundlagenvertrag) of mutual recognition between East and West Germany was signed. This made Australia the first capitalist nation-state to officially recognise the GDR. The Embassy was one of a spate of trade posts opened by Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s government in the Eastern Bloc, including in Moscow, Belgrade, Beijing and Warsaw. Over 1978-79 under Malcolm Fraser, Australia's Trade Development Council reviewed Australia’s international trade relations and concluded that East Berlin should be cut. The Australian Embassy "at" the GDR prematurely ended its rental contract on the site well before the fall of the wall, in 1986.

Post-1990
After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the former Australian Embassy to East Berlin was privatised by Germany’s ‘Treuhandliegenschaftgesellschaft’ as part of a process which oversaw the selling-off of most East German state assets. Following its privatisation in 1996, the embassy property changed hands a number of times, first housing a medical laboratory and then the now-bankrupt media company Tape TV. In 2014, investor Lars Dittrich planned to demolish the building and develop the site. However, in autumn 2015, prompted by Pankow's Coucillor for Construction Jens-Holger Kirchner, the former embassy was placed under heritage listing, thus preserving the building to the current day. As of 2015, the owner is real estate developer Prexxot GmbH, whose plans to complete luxury apartments on the site in 2018 have been delayed.

Atelierhaus Australische Botschaft (Ost)
As of April 2017, the former embassy hosts the studios of around 30 artists of different disciplines, the Atelierhaus Australische Botschaft (Ost), which runs a series of ongoing public events.