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Designed by Schinkel and built after the wars of liberation waged against Napoleon, the New Guard House (Neue Wache) is in the shape of a Roman castrum with corner towers, inner courtyard and a hall of Doric columns set in front. The monuments to the Prussian generals, Bülow and Scharnhorst, created by Christian Daniel Rauch used to stand in front of the building. They were conceived as forming part of the planned Via Triumphalis Unter den Linden. The New Guard House was empty for several years after the November Revolution of 1918. Heinrich Tessenow converted it into a "Memorial to the World War Dead" in 1931. The courtyard was covered over apart from a round opening. A wreath of oak leaves in gold and silver lay on a black erratic boulder. Under the Nazis the New Guard House was turned into a "Reich Memorial". The old interior was replaced by a hall of the dead.
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