Museum is a place where art, culture and knowledge are preserved. We must learn from our past and that’s why, I believe, museums should be one of the first places to explore after the lockdown is lifted. Important Suggestion before I begin: Don’t not go out until the coronavirus leaves the face of the planet. Travel only after the situation is back to normal. Let’s start:
Here are four breathtaking museums in Berlin worth exploring in order to learn the rich history of European continent.
- DDR Museum: Nominated for European Museum of the year in 2008, the DDR Museum is an interactive museum in the part of central Berlin that formerly belonged to East Berlin. Most of you know about the city’s divide during the Cold War, but visiting DDR Museum will give you an insight into everyday life of East Berlin’s citizens. You can tour a typical prefab estate to see how people lived, look for objects in replicated living spaces, and experience being bugged by a covert listening device. The DDR Museum exemplifies the benefits of history trips to cities like Berlin by giving you an experience you cannot have elsewhere.
- German Historical Museum: The German Historical Museum (German: Deutsches Historisches Museum), known by the acronym DHM, is a museum in Berlin, Germany devoted to German history. It is a significant stop for all curious travellers on trips to Berlin. Its collections include works of art, documents, military items, posters and items from everyday life, spanning Germany’s history. The many thousands of items in the collection will give you an excellent insight into German artistic and material culture, with plenty of opportunities for focused study on aspects of culture – such as propaganda or items from particular periods.
- Jewish Museum: The Jewish Museum Berlin was opened in 2001 and is the largest Jewish museum in all of Europe. It consists of three buildings, two of which are new additions specifically built for the museum by architect Daniel Libeskind. German-Jewish history is documented in the collections, the library and the archive, and is reflected in the museum’s program of events. The museum is one of Germany’s most frequented museums (more than 10.8 million visitors between 2001 and 2016). It displays two thousand years of Jewish history in Germany. It begins by describing Jewish life in medieval settlements along the Rhine, and then moves into the early modern period with subjects such as the life of Glickl bas Judah Leib (1646-1724), who wrote of her experiences as a Jewish businesswoman in the city of Hamburg. The museum moves into the modern era with an exhibit about Nazi Germany and the Shoah, and then finishes with the more recent history of the migration of 200,000 Jews to Germany from the former Soviet Union. Visiting the Jewish Museum is a valuable way for you to expand your understanding of the long and complex history of Jews in Germany.
- Stasi Museum: You can continue exploration of the former East Berlin by visiting the Stasi Museum, which is located in the original headquarters of the Stasi (the Ministry for State Security of East Germany). It explores the political system of the nation and provides you a glimpse of what the building was like at the time.
- Bode Museum: The Bode Museum is one of the group of museums on Museum Island in Berlin, Germany. It was designed by architect Ernst von Ihne and completed in 1904. Originally called the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum after Emperor Frederick III, the museum was renamed in honor of its first curator, Wilhelm von Bode, in 1956. Closed for repairs since 1997, the museum was reopened on October 18, 2006 after a €156 million refurbishment. True to the ethos of its founding director, Wilhelm von Bode, who believed in mixing art collections, it is now the home for a collection of sculptures, Byzantine art, and coins and medals. The presentation of the collections is both geographic and chronological, with the Byzantine and Gothic art of northern and southern Europe displayed separately on the museum’s first floor and a similar regional division of Renaissance and Baroque art on its second floor.
