Brandenburg Gate role in 2018 European Athletics Championships. It is also the usual finish line of the Berlin Marathon. A Soviet flag flew from a flagpole atop the gate from 1945 until 1957, when it was replaced by an East German flag. Since the reunification of Germany, the flag and the pole have been removed. During the 1953 riots in East Berlin the Soviet flag was torn off by West Germans. In 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate. The Soviets hung large red banners across it to prevent him looking into East Berlin. In the 1980s, decrying the
Brandenburg Gate (Kaliningrad) hundred years later the gate was torn down and replaced by a brick structure by order of King Frederick II of Prussia. During restoration work in 1843 the gate was significantly altered and decorated with sharp decorative pediments, cruciform sandstone color, stylized leaves on the tops, coats of arms and medallions. Sculptures of Field Marshal Hermann von Boyen (1771–1848), a war minister and reformer of the Prussian army, and Lieutenant-General Ernst von Aster (1778–1855), chief of the engineering corps, and one of the initiators of the second strengthening of the city walls, were added as well. The Brandenburg Gate is