How to vertically align title when reducing the header size in Beamer Palo Alto theme?

Question

I tried for some time to adjust the height of the header in Beamer Palo Alto theme. I now managed to do so, but now I have the problem that the title in the header is not properly aligned anymore. Also the dark rectangle from the overlapping sidebar is now gone. Maybe someone could tell me how to vertically align the title and how to get back the rectangle. I hope this isn't a stupid question and I would greatly appreciate some help.

Here is an example of how I did it so far:

\documentclass[german]{beamer}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usetheme{PaloAlto}
\definecolor{Steelblue4}{rgb}{0.21,0.39,0.54}
\usecolortheme[named=Steelblue4]{structure}
\usefonttheme{serif}
\useinnertheme{rounded}
\setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{}
\title[]{Title}
\author[]{Author}
\date{Date}
\makeatletter

\setbeamertemplate{headline}
{%
    \begin{beamercolorbox}[ht=1cm,dp=3ex]{title}
    \usebeamerfont{title in head}    
    \end{beamercolorbox} %
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}{Frametitle 1}
\section{Frame 1}
Content...
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{Frametitle 2}
\section{Frame 2}
Content...
\end{frame}

\end{document}

I hope I did the example right as I am new to LaTex.

Answer 1

The quickest fix seems to be:

\makeatletter
\setlength{\beamer@headheight}{1cm}
\makeatother

Let's see a complete example (BTW, I switched sections outside the frame environment):

\documentclass[german]{beamer}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usetheme{PaloAlto}
\definecolor{Steelblue4}{rgb}{0.21,0.39,0.54}
\usecolortheme[named=Steelblue4]{structure}
\usefonttheme{serif}
\useinnertheme{rounded}
\setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{}
\title[]{Title}
\author[]{Author}
\date{Date}

\makeatletter
\setlength{\beamer@headheight}{1cm}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\section{Frame 1}
\begin{frame}{Frametitle 1}
\framesubtitle{Framesubtitle 1}
Content...
\end{frame}

\section{Frame 2}
\begin{frame}{Frametitle 2}
Content...
\end{frame}

\end{document}

which gives:

This modification makes sense if no logo should be inserted in the presentation otherwise the image should be set with proper dimensions.