Berliners Get Wrapped Up In Reichstag Plan -- Art? Irony? Or What?

BERLIN - If something can be wrapped, there's a fair chance that it will be this week in Berlin as artist Christo starts to wrap the Reichstag building.

Schoolkids have wrapped chairs and classroom objects. A national television program showed images of Chancellor Helmut Kohl and other politicians wrapped and tied. The moderator appeared in the same fashion to close the show.

Imitation or parody, what motivates these Germans in their wrapping frenzy is as unclear as the message Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, intend to convey by wrapping the 101-year-old once and future parliament building.

Work starts in earnest tomorrow. Within a week, the Reichstag will be covered in 120,000 square yards of silvery fabric and bound with nearly 10 miles of blue rope.

Germans are getting into the spirit. A brewery that uses the theme "Berlin masterpieces" is enticing drinkers with billboards featuring a silver-wrapped case of beer.

The Sorat Hotel, on the Spree River not far from the Reichstag, features a "wrapped menu" of food in pastry crusts, followed by a river cruise to view Christo's creation.

The Reichstag will remain veiled until July 9, after which work will start to renovate the war-scarred sandstone building to serve as Germany's parliament when the government moves from Bonn in 2000.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who celebrated their joint 60th birthday on Tuesday, convinced German authorities last year to let them wrap the Reichstag, an idea Christo had nurtured for 24 years. The $7.5 million project will be paid through sales of Christo's drawings or books.

The artist has shied away from saying what wrapping the Reichstag is meant to symbolize.

But his earlier projects, whether dotting umbrellas over the landscapes of Japan and California or hanging champagne-beige drapery from the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris, have focused attention on the objects of his art.

It is happening again with the Reichstag, both seriously and tongue-in-cheek. ARD television prepared a documentary on the history of the building, which has been the focus of so much tragedy.

A fire that ruined the Reichstag in 1933 served as pretext for Adolf Hitler's Nazis to impose dictatorship. The building was the center of fighting as the Soviet Red Army took Berlin in 1945. It was partially restored in the 1960s. And after the Berlin Wall went up, the Reichstag's east facade was only a few steps from that symbol of the Cold War.

Can such heavy symbolism be treated lightly? Some are trying. A current art exhibition includes a collage in which a nude woman starts the Reichstag on fire to get warm. Another artist turns the weighty fire theme into a birthday cake shaped like the Reichstag with candles.

Whatever Christo's intentions, the weekly Die Zeit says the Bulgarian-born artist has accomplished at least one thing: "Christo's cascade of folds is ending the ponderous, all-too-German argument over whether irony is permitted in dealing with a national symbol."