Lückentext: Jedoch vs Jeder confusion

Question

Das Brandenburger Tor in Berlin markiert den Standort eines früheren Stadttores entlang der Berliner Stadtmauer in Richtung Brandenburg und wurde 1791 erstmals geöffnet. Als Symbol des Kalten Krieges markierte es während der Teilung Deutschlands die deutlich sichtbare Grenze zwischen Ost und Westberlin. Seit der Wiedervereinigung 1991 je(doch) fungiert d(as) Brandenburger Tor eher als Wahrzeichen der Hauptstadt

In the above, the bracketted part was deleted, and I was expected to fill it in. I thought it would be "jeder" and interpretted the sentence to talk about how the people are considering the door to be a symbol of the capital city. However, this is the wrong interpretation and the correct one was to have it as jedoch. And also in, the second bracket, I considered it to be dative and put an "em".

Could someone explain why my interpretation is wrong, or why the right interpretation is the right one?

Answer 1

"Jeder" can't work. It is nominative (i.e. would be the subject of the sentence), and be placed on position 2. This position is however for the conjugated verb, since we are in a main sentence.

This means that position 1 is taken by the whole construct, "Seit der Wiedervereinigung 1991 je(xxx)". The jeXXX modifies the previous part. Possible words which do this are "aber" or "jedoch" (both meaning "however"). Usually, an "aber" and "jedoch" is placed before the noun group it modifies, and indeed we could have written

 Aber/Jedoch seit der Wiedervereinigung 1991 fungiert …

But in the case of a HS, the can also go at the end of position 1, and this is what we have here.

Other example:

Du kannst gern das Bier haben. Ich aber ziehe den Wein vor.

Note that "aber" and "jedoch" mean the same, and since your text shows the "je …", this leaves us with "jedoch" as the only choice.

Answer 2

Perhaps what is confusing is that the adverb "jedoch" comes before the verb while the subject "das Brandenburger Tor" comes after. In English the subject nearly always comes before the verb, even if there are adverbs and other sentence elements involved. The verb here is "fungieren" meaning to "act or function" as. While it's possible for a person to do this, it seems unlikely that they would act or function "als Wahrzeichen", "as a landmark". So assuming the gate is the landmark, there's really no room for a person or people to be added to the sentence. But I'm not fully convinced that "jedoch" is the only possible "je-" word that might be used. I guess we can rule out "jetzt" because there's already a time given, but "Jetzt fungiert das Brandenburger Tor ... " certainly seems possible. I'm thinking this may be one of those questions where you're supposed to give the "best" answer even if it's not the "only" possible answer.