The path leads from the Wilhelmshöher Allee down a slight slope, vestige of the stream that used to flow here before the Third Reich built the Ninth Army Corps Administration Headquarters. The first view reveals an almost ironic - but definitely subtle - accent which now enhances the new entrance to the Federal Social Court. In diagonal relation to the view, the sculpture by artist Gabriele Obermaier circumvents the severe axial alignment of the building complex. All the distinctive basic geometrical forms of the architecture are downscaled, squeezed, stretched or compressed. Gabriele Obermaier achieves this soft almost haptic impression by means of an intermediate process: The sculpture was shaped in felt before being cast in aluminium. The SOFT HOUSE is an architectural model made after the fact and which deconstructs the building's architectonic strategies. As one approaches the entrance, this formal and contextual tension between sculpture and building becomes increasingly visible.

Embrasures in sandstone, pilaster strips and military embellishments; to the south a cour d'honneur with pillared colonnades; to the east a monumental stanchioned portico with horsemen curbing their fiery steeds and an entrance stairway comprised of several flights. The National Socialists staged the complex as a pseudo temple: A building layout, whose goal was to intimidate by its overdimensionality and which claimed for itself superhuman power. To transfer into democratic use a building conceived with political intentions such as these is quite a challenge. The renovation, now complete, met this challenge by setting an ellipsoid construction in the square inner courtyard of the great hearing room to receive, like a casket, the due process of law. It can be reached via the new main entrance through the pillared colonnades.

Now, one must no longer climb up to the pseudo temple. Instead, to begin with, citizens stand eye-to-eye on a level with the judicial authority of the state before proceeding down to the new main entrance. They pass the SOFT HOUSE which reminds one of the former entrance configuration: The sculpture turns the visitor purposively towards the portico. This can either be regarded as criticism of the renovation which attempts to distract one's attention away from the building's history or, as the opposite, a gesture which actually highlights the reorientation and democratic use of the building. This ambiguity is what makes the stage-setting of the unapproachable "Fuehrer" state visible and, therefore, ponderable.

And now to turn back: That the sweeping, park-like forecourt is still there is a fortunate coincidence in the truest sense of the word. Initially, this lawn was to be buried, as was the late-Baroque Wilhelmshöher Allee, under a monstrously broadened flamboyant National Socialist avenue. From here, the subtle proportions of the sculpture become apparent: It is pledged to a human scale, which makes the immoderateness of the authoritarian regime all the more obvious. The SOFT HOUSE is a tangible indication of what, in the simple, dry parlance of a democratic state, one could call the appropriateness of the means.

Ralf Homann/ Translation: Greta Dunn