On the night of February 27, 1933, it was seriously damaged by a fire that had been deliberately set. A Dutch anarchist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was arrested and charged with arson. The police—now under the control of the Nazis, specifically of Hermann Göring—announced the discovery of a Communist plot against the government. Two days later an emergency decree suspended civil rights, and the government shut down the opposition press and political parties.
