Museum sights in Berlin
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DDR Museum
In East Germany kids were put through collective potty training, engineers earned little more than farmers and everyone, it seems, went on nudist holidays. Such are the fascinating nuggets you’ll learn at the small, interactive DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) Museum dedicated to teaching the rest of us about daily life behind the Iron Curtain. Small and delightfully interactive, this is where you can turn the ignition key of an authentic Trabant car or learn how to dance the Lipsi, the GDR’s answer to rock ‘n’ roll. A must for Good Bye Lenin! fans. Lest you get the impression that life in the GDR was cute and wholesome, though, you might want to follow up a…
reviewed
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Deutsches Historisches Museum
This engaging museum zeroes in on two millennia of German history in all its gore and glory; not in a nutshell but on two floors of a Prussian-era armoury. Check out the Nazi globe, the pain-wrecked faces of dying warrior sculptures in the courtyard, and the temporary exhibits in the boldly modern annex designed by IM Pei.
reviewed
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Neues Museum
Open since October 2009, the New Museum is a shining beacon on Museumsinsel thanks in equal part to its stellar exhibits and to David Chipperfield’s glorious reconstruction. Just like the original museum, a Friedrich August Stüler design of 1859, the building harbours the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection as well as the Museum of Pre- and Early History. This is where you come for an audience with Berlin’s most beautiful woman, the 3330-year-old Queen Nefertiti, she of the long, graceful neck and timeless good looks. The bust was part of the treasure trove unearthed by a Berlin expedition of archaeologists around 1912 while sifting through the sands of Armana. This…
reviewed
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Gründerzeit Museum
Quite frankly, this museum in the far-flung suburb of Mahlsdorf would be just another dusty collection of period rooms had its founder not been the GDR’s most famous transvestite and gay icon. And what a life s/he led! Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, neé Lothar Berfelde, was born in 1928 and, much to the consternation of her Nazi father, was much more into dresses and dolls than trains and automobiles. Papa Berfelde’s efforts to whup his son into manhood ended abruptly when s/he bludgeoned him to death with his own revolver at the tender age of 15. After a short stint in prison, Charlotte turned into the ultimate pack rat, eventually assembling enough furnishings and bric-a-brac…
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Schloss Köpenick
On a little island just south of the Altstadt (via Alt-Köpenick), the baroque Köpenick Palace served not only as a royal residence but also as a prison and a teaching seminary before becoming a museum in 1963. Since 1990 it’s been home to a branch of the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Decorative Arts). Exhibits showcase a rich and eclectic collection of decorative furniture, tapestries, porcelain, silverware, glass and other items from the Renaissance, baroque and rococo periods. Highlights include four lavishly panelled rooms and the stunning Wappensaal (Coat of Arms Hall). It was in this very hall where, in 1730, a military court meted out questionable justice…
reviewed
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Zitadelle Spandau
The 16th-century Spandau Citadel, on a little island in the Havel River, is one of the most important and best-preserved Renaissance fortresses in the world. With its moat, drawbridge and arrowhead-shaped bastions, it is also a veritable textbook in military architecture. Imagine yourself a guard keeping an eye out for enemies as you climb up the crenellated tower called Juliusturm. From 1874 to 1919, somewhere deep in the tower’s bowels, Prussia’s rulers hid the war booty wrestled from France after the war of 1870–71. If you want to fill any gaps in your historical knowledge, drop by the Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Spandau (Spandau City History Museum) in the…
reviewed
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Ökowerk
t may have a terrifying name, but at 115m high, the Teufelsberg (Devil’s Mountain), just south of the Olympic grounds, ain’t no Matterhorn. It is, however, the tallest of Berlin’s 20 ‘rubble mountains’, built by citizens, initially most of them women, during the clean-up of their bomb-ravaged city after WWII. It took 20 years to pile up 25 million cubic metres of debris. The curious domed structure up on top used to be a listening station operated by the Allies during the Cold War. The hill that was born from destruction is now a fun zone, especially in snowy winters when hordes of squealing kids toboggan or ski down its gentle slopes. At other times you can explore the…
reviewed
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Deutsch-Russisches Museum Berlin-Karlshorst
In the waning days of WWII, this building served as the headquarters of the Soviet army. On 8 May 1945, German commanders signed the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht here. The war was over. Since 1995 a joint Russian-German exhibit has commemorated this fateful day and the events leading up to it. Documents, photographs, uniforms and various knick-knacks illustrate such topics as the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the daily grind of life as a WWII Soviet soldier and the fate of Soviet civilians during wartime. You can stand in the great hall where the surrender was signed and see the office of Marshal Zhukov, the first Soviet supreme commander after WWII when the building…
reviewed
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Mendelssohn Exhibit
The Mendelssohns are one of the great German family dynasties, starting with the pater familias, Jewish Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86). An exhibit in the private banking house founded in 1815 by two of his sons now traces the fate and history of this influential family, who was forced into bankrupcy by the Nazis, prompting many to flee the country.
Other personalities associated with Jägerstrasse include Alexander von Humboldt, who was born at No 22, and the painter Georg Grosz, who lived at No 63. Rahel Varnhagen held her intellectual salons at No 54, now the restaurant Vau.
reviewed
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Ephraim-Palais
Once the residence of the court jeweller and coin minter Veitel Heine Ephraim, this pretty, pint-sized 1766 town palace now presents changing exhibits focusing on aspects of Berlin's artistic and cultural legacy. It's hard to tell that this is building is in fact a replica, the original having been destroyed during the construction of the Mühlendamm bridge in 1935.
Only the curved rococo facade with its gilded ironwork balconies and sculptural ornamentation was saved and stored in what later became West Berlin. In 1984, it was returned to East Belin so that it could be used in the construction of the Nikolaiviertel. Inside, architectural highlights include the oval…
reviewed
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Erotik Museum
Relax, it’s just sex… Right on a suitably seedy corner, Berlin’s Erotik Museum is a shrine to human sexuality, a three-storey tower of titillation, a monument to physical pleasure. Or is it? OK, we’ll leave that up to you to judge… The brainchild of Beate Uhse, Germany’s late sex-toy queen, the museum is stacked with over 3000 items of erotica from around the world. There’s plenty of artsy stuff like Japanese Shunga art (with exaggerated genitalia), Chinese sex-ed ‘wedding tiles’ and hardcore watercolours by George Grosz. The fetish dioramas are downright tacky, but the early erotic films and historic chastity belts are quite amusing. Naturally, Frau Uhse gets a shrine to…
reviewed
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Heimatmuseum
With its frilly turrets, soaring tower and stepped gable, Köpenick’s town hall (Rathaus; Alt-Köpenick 21) exudes a fairytale quality but is actually more famous for an incident back in 1906. It involved an unemployed cobbler named Wilhelm Voigt, who managed to make a laughing stock of the Prussian authorities: costumed as an army captain, he marched upon the town hall, arrested the mayor, confiscated the city coffers and disappeared with the loot. And no one questioned his authority! At least for a while. Although quickly caught and convicted, Voigt became quite a celebrity for his chutzpah. Today a bronze statue of the Hauptmann of Köpenick guards the town hall entrance.…
reviewed
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Jüdisches Museum
In a landmark building by American-Polish architect Daniel Libeskind, Berlin's Jewish Museum offers a chronicle of the trials and triumphs in 2000 years of Jewish history in Germany. The exhibit smoothly navigates through all major periods, from the Middle Ages via the Enlightenment to the community's current renaissance. Find out about Jewish cultural contributions, holiday traditions, the difficult road to emancipation and outstanding individuals such as the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, jeans inventor Levi Strauss and the painter Felix Nussbaum.
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Gruselkabinett Berlin
This ‘horror cabinet’ is housed within a WWII air-raid shelter, once part of a network of bunkers, including Hitler’s, which extended for miles beneath the city. A small exhibit in the basement has displays on the bunker’s history along with wartime-era newspapers, recordings of Allied plane attacks and a smattering of actual belongings left behind by those once holed up here during the bombing raids. Other exhibits are more hokey than historical, but seem to score well with teenaged school groups thanks perhaps to the eccentric couple who run the place. On the ground floor, groaning dummies demonstrate the niceties of medieval surgery techniques, and upstairs you’ll be…
reviewed
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Georg Kolbe Museum
Georg Kolbe (1877-1947) was one of Germany’s most influential sculptors in the first half of the 20th century. A member of the Berlin Secession, he distanced himself from traditional sculpture and became a chief exponent of the idealised nude. After his wife’s death in 1927, Kolbe’s figures took on a more solemn and emotional air, whereas his later works focus on the athletic male, an approach that found favour with the Nazis.
The attractive museum, in Kolbe’s former studio, shows works from all phases of the artist’s life alongside temporary exhibits often drawn from his rich private collection of 20th-century sculpture and paintings. The sculpture garden is an…
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Nikolaikirche
The lofty late-Gothic Church of St Nicholas (1230) is Berlin’s oldest surviving building and now a museum documenting the architecture and history of the church. Grab the free audioguide for the scoop on the octagonal baptismal font and the late-Gothic triumphal cross or find out why the building is nicknamed ‘pantheon of prominent Berliners’. Getting buried here, by the way, cost a nobleman 80 thalers, an ‘old person’ 50 thalers.
Head up the gallery for close-ups of the organ, a sweeping view of the interior and a chance to listen to recorded church hymns.
reviewed
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Luftwaffenmuseum
About 9km south of Altstadt Spandau, the Luftwaffenmuseum (German Air Force Museum) occupies the grounds of the former military air field Berlin-Gatow. Built in 1934–35 as a Nazi air combat and technical training academy, it came under British control after the war and provided an important lifeline during the 1948 Berlin Airlift. Since the Union Jack was taken down in 1994, the Bundeswehr (German armed forces) has moved exhibits about the history of the Luftwaffe and the airport itself into the old hangars. An old control tower now houses uniforms and military ephemera, while the runways are littered with over 100 historical craft, including WWI biplanes, a Russian…
reviewed
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Museum für Vor-und Frühgeschichte
In the former palace theatre at Schloss Charlottenburg, the Museum of Pre- and Early History sheds light on the cultural evolution of Europe and parts of Asia from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages. Pride of place goes to the Trojan antiquities (some originals, some replicas) unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann in 1870. Upstairs in gallery 3, the focus is on Europe with a preserved Neanderthal skull being a highlight. Also keep an eye out for the Berliner Goldhut, a famous Bronze Age conical hat made of a thin layer of gold, in gallery 4. The museum is to set move to the Neues Museum on Museumsinsel, possibly as early as 2009.
reviewed
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Anna Seghers Gedenkstätte
Anna Seghers (1900–83) is best known for her chilling novel The Seventh Cross (1941), which was turned into a movie starring Spencer Tracy in 1944. A committed communist, she spent the Nazi years in exile in France and Mexico before moving into this small flat with her husband upon their return in 1955. It’s a modest, functional 1950s-style place that practically drowns in books. A Remington typewriter sits silently on her desk, and there are lots of souvenirs Seghers brought back from her travels. A small exhibit traces her life and work and the museum will open additional hours by appointment.
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Kindercity
No scowling museum guards here: kids have the run of this interactive indoor playground with lots of stations for discovering, learning, exploring and playing. Depending on their age group, youngsters follow three different ‘learning lanes’ where they get to do such things as create their own TV program, learn sign language or find out what it’s like to get around in a wheelchair. In 90-minute ‘factory workshops’, they are taught how to fix a car, make delicious chocolates or excavate a dino skeleton. Other diversions include a driving school, a toy train, a cinema and, of course, the obligatory café and shop.
reviewed
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Anti-Kriegs-Museum
Tiny and free, the Antiwar Museum is a labour of love with a big – and timely – message. Erich Friedrich, who founded it in 1925, was an avowed peacenik and author of the book War against War (1924). After Nazis trashed his museum in 1933, he emigrated to Belgium and later joined the French resistance. His grandson, Tommy Spree, reopened the museum in 1982 with objects from both world wars. A staircase descends to an air-raid shelter equipped with bunk beds, gas masks and a creepy ‘gas bed’ for babies. The Peace Gallery presents changing exhibits.
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Museum für Fotografie
Berlin's Museum of Photography is still a work in progress. For now, its biggest tenant is the Helmut Newton Collection, which chronicles the artistic legacy of this Berlin-born enfant terrible of fashion and lifestyle photography on two floors of this former Prussian officers’ casino behind Bahnhof Zoologischer Garten. On the top floor, the gloriously restored barrel-vaulted Kaisersaal (Emperor’s Hall) forms a grand backdrop for high-calibre changing photography exhibits drawn from the archive of the State Art Library.
Shorty before his fatal car crash in 2004, Newton donated 1500 images along with personal effects to the city in which he was born in 1920. He had…
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Stasi – Die Ausstellung
They hid tiny cameras in watering cans and flowerpots, stole keys from school children to install listening devices in their homes and collected body-odour samples from suspects’ groins. This exhibit engagingly reveals the GDR’s Ministry for State Security (Stasi) as an all-pervasive power with an all-out zeal and twisted imagination when it came to controlling, manipulating and repressing its own people. The photographs and items on display speak volumes but to make better sense of it all, ask for the free English-language booklet at the reception desk.
reviewed
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Loxx Miniatur Welten Berlin
If you want to see dad turn into a little kid, take him to this huge model railway where digitally controlled trains zip around central Berlin en miniature. Landmarks from the Brandenburg Gate to the TV Tower have been recreated on a scale of 1:87; more are added all the time. Potsdamer Platz was 'under construction’ when we visited.
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Zille Museum
Like no other artist of his time, Heinrich Zille (1859–1929) managed to capture the hardships of working-class life in the age of industrialisation with empathy and humour. This small private museum in the Nikolaiviertel preserves his legacy with a selection of drawings, photographs and graphic art. There's also an interesting video on his life, though in German only.
Afterwards, you can channel Zille’s ghost over a beer at the nearby Zum Nussbaum pub, his rather authentically re-created favourite watering hole.
reviewed