Museum sights in Berlin
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Ddr Museum
Below the hotel, the DDR Museum teaches the rest of us about daily life behind the Iron Curtain. You'll learn that East German kids were put through collective potty training, engineers earned little more than farmers and everyone, it seems, went on nudist holidays. A must for Good Bye, Lenin! fans. The entrance is on the Spree bank, opposite the Berliner Dom.
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Deutsches Historisches Museum
If you're wondering what the Germans have been up to for the past 2000 years, pop into the excellent Deutsches Historisches Museum. A startling highlight is the big globe that originally stood in the Nazi Foreign Office with bullet holes where Germany should be. In the courtyard, Andreas Schlüter's baroque mask sculptures of dying soldiers make a strong case against war. High-calibre temporary exhibits take up a strikingly geometrical annexe, called IM Pei Bau, named for the architect that designed it.
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Stasi Museum
The former head office of the Ministry of State Security is now the Stasi Museum, where you can marvel at cunningly low-tech surveillance devices (hidden in watering cans, rocks, even neckties), a prisoner transport van with teensy, lightless cells and the obsessively neat offices of Stasi chief Erich Mielke. Panelling is in German only and exhibits are not always self-explanatory, so you may want to invest a few euros in the English-language booklet.
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Neues Museum
After 10 years and €200 million, the reconstructed Neues Museum finally opened in October 2009. David Chipperfield harmoniously incorporated remnants of the war-damaged structure into the new building, which presents the Egyptian Museum (including the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti) and the Papyrus Collection.These are joined by the Museum of Pre- and Early History and works from the Collection of Classical Antiquities.
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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 agains…
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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 forme…
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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 t…
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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 wa…
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Mendelssohn Exhibit
The Mendelssohns are one of the great German family dynasties, starting with the pater familias, the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86). Also known as the German Socrates, he was the founder of the Haskalah movement (the Jewish Enlightenment) that sought to create a modern, secular Jewish identity. In 1815 his sons Joseph and Abraham (father of composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy) founded a private banking house in Jägerstrasse 51, Berlin’s historical banking quarter. In 1938, the bank was forced into bankruptcy – many family members had fled Nazi Germany. Today an exhibit in the resurrected headquarters traces the fate and history of this influential family. Numero…
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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…
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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.…
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Jüdisches Museum
For an eye-opening, emotional and interactive exploration of 2000 years of Jewish history in Germany visit the impressive Jüdisches Museum. You'll learn about Jewish cultural contributions, holiday traditions, the difficult road to Emancipation, and outstanding individuals, such as jeans inventor Levi Strauss and philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. Only one section deals directly with the Holocaust, but its horrors are poignantly reflected by Daniel Libeskind's powerful museum building. Essentially a 3-D metaphor for Jewish suffering, its silvery zinc walls are sharply angled, and instead of windows there are only small gashes piercing the building's gleaming skin. The visual …
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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 s…
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Café Sybille
One of the most popular cafés in East Berlin until the fall of the Wall, Café Sybille closed in 1997, but was taken over in 2001 by a nonprofit organisation. Exuding sober early ’60s charm, it’s a great spot for a coffee break but also for digging up more information about the history of Karl-Marx-Allee (KMA). An ever-growing exhibit pulls away the curtain on the past of this famous boulevard, charting its milestones from inception to today. There are portraits and biographies of the architects, alongside posters, toys and other items from socialist times; even a piece of Stalin’s moustache scavenged from the nearby statue that was torn down in 1961. For a bird’s-eye view…
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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 gar…
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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 MiG…
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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.
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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.
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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/Helmut Newton Sammlung
Entertainment for grown-ups awaits at the Museum für Fotografie/Helmut Newton Sammlung. Built as a Prussian officer's casino and later used as an art library, this imposing neoclassical building now houses changing photography exhibits of international stature upstairs in the Kaisersaal (Emperor's Hall), a barrel-vaulted banqueting hall. The ground floor is dedicated to the works of Helmut Newton, the Berlin-born enfant terrible of fashion photography. Tickets are also good for same-day admission to the Museum Berggruen (and Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg.
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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.
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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 three-room private museum in the Nikolaiviertel preserves his legacy with a selection of drawings, photographs and graphic art. The video on his life, though, is in German only. Afterwards, you can channel Zille’s ghost over a beer at Zum Nussbaum (Am Nussbaum 3), his rather authentically re-created favourite watering hole.
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Sammlung Kindheit & Jugend
On the upper floor of a GDR-era school, this small museum takes you on a sometimes entertaining, sometimes pedantic journey through the history of growing up in Germany, Berlin in particular. Nostalgia buffs can squeeze behind the wooden desks of a re-created 1912 classroom or discover the purpose of an Eselskappe (donkey hat), which had to be worn by undisciplined kids, or test their penmanship using quill and ink. The big collection of toys from the past two centuries brings smiles to faces young and old.
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