Enke created the Castor and Pollux sculpture, symbolising the reunion of the German nation, which adorned the tympanum. Other prominent German masters created paintings, sculptures and fretwork to adorn the building. The Embassy building was officially opened on 14 January 1913. The artistic community in Saint Petersburg held negative opinions of the building, with prominent members of the community, Alexandre Benois, Nikolay Wrangel and Georgy Lukomsky, criticising the Teutonic style of the building as being hostile to the architectural style of the city, and due to it differing greatly from the Russian neoclassical revival style. It was rumoured at the time that the Embassy was linked to the German–owned Hotel Astoria via a tunnel, and on 1–2 August 1914, after Germany declared war on Russia, crowds stormed the building as anti-German sentiment took hold in the city. The building sustained considerable damage, with crowds torching the throne room of Kaiser Wilhelm II, destroying Greek and Italian art work and a collection of Sèvres porcelain. The Dioskouroi sculpture from the roof disappeared during this time, and rumours abounded that it was dumped in the Moika River by the crowd, however, researchers have been unable to find any fragments of the sculpture in the river. After the war, the Germans returned to the city in 1922, at the time known as Petrograd, and operated a consulate from the building, representing the Weimar Republic and later Nazi Germany, until 1939. During the Siege of Leningrad, the Red Army operated a hospital in the premises, and after the Great Patriotic War it housed the Institute of Semiconductor Physics. Later tenants of the building have included Intourist, Dresdner Bank and the Committee for the Management of City Property of the Saint Petersburg City Administration (). Today the building houses the Administration Board of the Ministry of Justice and the Chief Technical Commission to the President of the Russian Federation for the Northwestern Federal District. Restoration of the building began in 2001, and with the support of Rossvyazokhrankultura and Governor Valentina Matvienko, in a project estimated at 170 million rubles, a group of restorers led by OOO «StroyTREST» are planning to recreate the Dioskouroi sculpture for placement on the tympanum of the building. Plans have been in the works for several years to replace the sculpture, and the warm relations between Russia and Germany have created the right political atmosphere for the restoration of the building