Museum sights in Germany
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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…
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NS Dokumentationszentrum
Cologne's Third Reich history is poignantly documented in the NS Documentation Centre. In the basement of this otherwise mundane-looking building was the local Gestapo prison where scores of people were interrogated, tortured and killed. Inscriptions on the basement cell walls offer a gut-wrenching record of the emotional and physical pain endured by inmates. Executions often occurred in the courtyard.
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Deutsches Museum
If you’re one of those people for whom science is an unfathomable turn off, a visit to the Deutsches Museum might just show you that physics and engineering are more fun than you thought. Spending a few hours in this temple to technology is an eye-opening journey of discovery and the exhibitions and demonstrations will certainly be a hit with young minds.
There are tons of interactive displays (including glass blowing and paper-making), live demonstrations and experiments, model coal and salt mines, and engaging sections on cave paintings, geodesy, microelectronics and astronomy. In fact, it can be pretty overwhelming after a while, so it's best to prioritise what you…
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Museum Ludwig
The distinctive building facade and unorthodox roofline signal that the Museum Ludwig is no ordinary museum. Considered a mecca of postmodern art, it actually presents a survey of all major 20th-century genres. There’s plenty of American pop art, including Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, alongside a comprehensive Picasso collection and plenty of works by Sigmar Polke. Fans of German expressionism will get their fill here as much as those with a penchant for such Russian avant-gardists as Kasimir Malewitsch and Ljubow Popowa.
Admission is also good for the Foto-Museum Agfa Foto-Historama, a collection of compelling historic photographs.
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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.
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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…
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Gutenberg Museum
A heady experience for anyone excited by books, the Gutenberg Museum takes a panoramic look at the technology that made the world as we know it possible. Highlights include very early printed masterpieces – kept safe in a walk-in vault – such as three extremely rare (and valuable) examples of Gutenberg’s original 42-line Bible. Many of the signs are in English; a quarter-hour film is available in seven languages.
In the museum’s Druckladen across tiny Seilergasse, you can try out Gutenberg’s technology yourself on the condition that you’re at least five years old. You’ll be instructed in the art of hand-setting type – backwards, of course. Nearby, master craftsmen…
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Verkehrsmuseum
Nuremberg's Verkehrsmuseum combines two major exhibits under one roof: the Deutsche Bahn Museum (German Railway Museum) and the Museum für Kommunikation (Museum of Telecommunications). The former explores the origins and history of Germany's legendary railway system; the latter showcases development in telecommunications, including historic telephones dating back over 100 years.
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Neues Museum
The Neues Museum houses works of contemporary art in Weimar. The complex was built in 1863, as a gallery exclusively for works relating to Homer's Odyssey, but another odyssey occurred after it was used as a Halle der Volksgemeinschaft (literally 'people's solidarity hall') by the Nazis, and was then renamed Karl-Marx-Platz under the GDR.
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Reichsparteitagsgelände
Nuremberg's role during the Third Reich is emblazoned in minds around the world through the images of rapturous Nazi supporters thronging the city's streets to salute their Führer. The rallies at the Reichsparteitagsgelände were part of an orchestrated propaganda campaign that began as early as 1927 to garner support for the NSDAP, which had a strong following in Nuremberg. In 1933, the party planned a ridiculously large purpose-built complex in the southeastern Luitpoldhain suburb.
In doing this Nazi leaders hoped to establish a metaphorical link between Nuremberg's illustrious past as Reichstagstadt (where parliament met during the Holy Roman Empire) and the Third…
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Münchner Stadtmuseum
Installed for the city's 850th birthday in 2008, the Typisch München (Typical Munich) exhibition at this unmissable museum tells Munich's story in an imaginative, uncluttered and engaging way. Taking up the whole of a rambling building, exhibits in each section represent something quintessential about the city; a booklet/audioguide relates the tale behind them, thus condensing a long and tangled history into easily digestible themes.
Set out in chronological order, the exhibition kicks off with the founding monks and ends in the post-war boom decades. The first of five sections, Old Munich, contains a scale model of the city in the late 16th century (one of five…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Escape Museum
In the secluded Zwickauer Mulde valley, 46km south of Leipzig, lies the sleepy town of Colditz and its impressive (though rundown) fortress. The Renaissance structure was used by Augustus the Strong as a hunting lodge in the 17th century and became a mental hospital in the 1800s. In WWII the Nazis converted it into a high-security prison, known as Oflag IVc (Officer’s Camp IVc). Its inmates, mostly Allied officers who had already escaped from other prisons, proved that putting hardened jail-breakers together was a mistake. Between 1939 and 1945 there were more than 300 escape attempts, earning Colditz the reputation as a ‘bad boys’ camp. In all, 31 men managed to flee,…
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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.
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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…
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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
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…
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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.
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