From the podium, Florian Mausbach is looking down at perhaps 50 people. It's a smallish gathering -- the room could easily hold a crowd three times as big. Which comes as something of a surprise, given the controversy that Mausbach's project is likely to generate. He wants to see yet another monument built in Berlin, a city already jammed full with historical memorials -- most of them preceded by months, if not years, of bickering. He envisions a monument to German reunification, and like the projects that went before, he wants state money to fund it.

But the news hasn't yet spread; the discussion hasn't yet hit the headlines. But it has begun. Franziska Eichstädt-Bohlig, of the Green Party, is sitting next to Mausbach, picking apart his ideas. A man in the audience asks: "Exactly how much is this monument supposed to cost?"

It's always the first question when it comes to new monuments. Mausbach leans toward the microphone. "We can only provide a rough estimate," he says. "At first we were talking about €5 million ($6.57 million). Now it's €15 million ($19.7 million). Ultimately, it all depends on the design."

Mausbach is an urban planner and the president of the German Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning. He came up with his idea for a unity monument 10 years ago -- back at a time with the two sides, East and West, were still worlds apart. But Mausbach was already thinking about the future. He searched for and found allies, including Günter Nooke and Lothar de Maizière -- two East Germans: one a civil rights activist and the other the last East German prime minister. Together with them Mausbach, a West German, entered the monument struggle.

Wrong Time for Unity

For a long time, it seemed that the struggle would be in vain. Berlin was in the midst of a controversy over the memorial to Jewish victims of the Holocaust -- a bitter back-and-forth that soon morphed into controversies over a monument to gypsy Holocaust victims and then another for homosexual victims. It was, in short, the wrong time for a monument to German unity.

But on Nov. 9, 2007 -- the 18th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall -- the lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag, finally took up Mausbach's idea and approved the construction of a memorial to freedom and unity. It was to be built in downtown Berlin in 2009, two decades after East and West Berlin rejoined to once again become a single city. At the end of November of this year, the Bundestag finally freed up €15 million ($19.8 million) for the monument and this week the design competition began. Which brings Mausbach's idea to a difficult point -- implementation.

In order to make that happen, the 64-year-old Mausbach, who wears his gray hair combed back, is currently doing his best to attract attention to his cause. He and his cohorts are, at the moment, on a kind of publicity tour through Germany, spending time at public forums and events. And talking unceasingly about the unity monument.

Much about the project is still vague and unclear. Nobody knows how long the construction will take -- indeed, no one even knows what the monument might look like. Construction will certainly not start begin in 2009 as planned, but Mausbach hopes to unveil the chosen design next year on Nov. 9.

Complicated

Still, as with all things related to memory -- and to German reunification  -- it is hard to imagine that the unity monument will not become the subject for passionate debate among politicians, experts and citizens. Furthermore, the memorial in question is a complicated one. Not only is it to commemorate the events of 1989, but, as the Bundestag put it, "the freedom movements and efforts to achieve unity in the past centuries." The monument is to become a German national monument, one that encompasses everything from 1848 to 1989. An all-inclusive memorial.

Mausbach already has the site picked out -- the pedestal of the former equestrian statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I. The pedestal is located in the heart of Berlin on Schlossplatz square, right in front of where the East German capital building, the Palast der Republik , once stood. "The pedestal measures 40 by 80 meters (130 by 160 feet). "There is enough space there for five single-family homes," says Mausbach.

But even the site could be controversial. At Mausbach's appearance in Berlin last week, Eichstädt-Bohlig demanded of him: "Why Schlossplatz? It's completely arbitrary. Who sees a connection between Schlossplatz and the revolution of 1989? No one!" Why not Alexanderplatz, she suggests, pointing out that there was a huge demonstration held there on Nov. 4, 1989. Unmoved, Mausbach counters that Alexanderplatz is full of department stores, hinting that it has become a center of consumerism.

What about at the Brandenburg Gate? No, says Mausbach. The site is already thick with symbolism. A man stands up and says: "Ultimately, the West brought freedom to the East. Shouldn't two-thirds of the monument be in the West and one-third in the East?"

Why Not a Park?

The argument continues. Mausbach talks about the "arc of architectural tension" that would develop between the Holocaust memorial and the unity monument, between a place of sadness and a place of joy. He talks about the symbolism of a "monument to revolution" standing in the place where Kaiser Wilhelm I once stood, about the victory of the people over the ruling class.

"All of that is much too intellectual for me," says Eichstädt-Bohlig. "It's not emotional. It doesn't touch people's hearts."

Someone in the audience asks: "What exactly will the monument look like?" Mausbach says: "Something cheerful and inviting." Eichstädt-Bohlig says: "But not bombastic and monumental." Mausbach says: "Well, a certain amount of size is necessary." Eichstädt-Bohlig counters: "Manageable and controllable. Human dimensions." Someone in the audience asks: "Why not build a freedom and unity park?"