Germany’s Jewish Museum: Telling the story of a lifetime

The Jewish Museum Berlin first became known for its architecture – the building designed by Daniel Libeskind was already a much frequented place by Berliners and tourists in 1999, two years before the permanent exhibition was opened. The museum also reflects the great interest in the architecture with texts and pictures of the two buildings: […]

The Jewish Museum Berlin first became known for its architecture – the building designed by Daniel Libeskind was already a much frequented place by Berliners and tourists in 1999, two years before the permanent exhibition was opened. The museum also reflects the great interest in the architecture with texts and pictures of the two buildings: the Old Building (the baroque Collegienhaus) and the modern Libeskind Building.
The Jewish Museum Berlin is dedicated to the telling of narrative history. The museum contains a great fund of material, stories and knowledge concerning all areas of German Jewish History.The museum contains a great fund of material, stories and knowledge concerning all areas of German Jewish History. The Jewish Museum’s permanent historical exhibition extends over 3,000 square meters and invites visitors to journey through two thousand years of German-Jewish life. Temporary exhibitions, contemporary art installations, cabinet displays as well as various interactive multimedia shows in the Rafael Roth Learning Centre complement its range of themes.
Berlin’s Judisches Museum (Jewish Museum), housed in a remarkable modern building designed by Daniel Libeskind, opened in September 2001. Shaped a bit like the Star of David and containing bizarre angles to symbolize the Holocaust, the Judisches Museum is the largest and most unique Jewish museum in Europe.
The Jewish Museum in Berlin was originally founded in Oranienburger Strasse in 1933. It was closed in 1938 by the state police. The idea to revive the museum was first voiced in 1971, and an “Association for a Jewish Museum” was founded in 1975.
A Jewish department of the Berlin Museum was founded after the Berlin Museum displayed an exhibition on Jewish history in Berlin in 1978; the foundation stone for an extension to the Berlin Museum was laid in November 1992.
In 1999, the Jewish Museum in Berlin was granted status as an independent institution. The new building by Daniel Libeskind was finished in 1998 and officially opened in 2001.
The contrast between the old building and the new modern one illustrates the vast difference in thinking between the Nazis and the Jews. Hitler would have called this new building “degenerate” architecture.
Entry to the Jewish Museum is through the Baroque building, shown in the photo above, which was formerly Berlin’s Superior court. The Jewish Museum was originally an annex of the Berlin Museum in the former court building, which is called the Kolliegenhaus. The Berlin Museum was moved back to its original home, and the Jewish Museum formally opened here as a separate museum in October 2001.
Entrance to the new modern building is downstairs and through a tunnel. For tourists, there is only one exit from the building, through the old building.
Inside the museum is a hallway, called the “axis of Exile,” leading to the stone garden outside, which features 49 columns filled with dirt and planted with miniature trees, as shown in one of the photos above. There are 7 rows of 7 columns. Forty-eight of the columns represent the year 1948 when Israel was founded and the 49th column represents Berlin. Entry to the stone garden is only from inside the museum and there is no exit, so one must go back through the corridor to the exit in the old building next to the new modern building.
The Jewish Museum’s exhibits chronicle the history of the Jewish community in Germany from the Middle Ages to today, particularly during the reign of the Third Reich. A general overview of Judaism is provided on the third floor.
Complimenting Libeskind’s striking architecture are some works of contemporary art, most notably the Shalechet (“Fallen Leaves”) installation by Menashe Kadishman of Tel Aviv. Occupying a corner space called the “Memory Void”, it consists of 10,000 iron faces strewn thickly across the floor. The faces are coarsely stamped but full of expression, with mouths open in suffering. Visitors are permitted to walk on the work. Doing so creates a loud, “industrial” noise and is quite a unique and moving experience. It is the largest Jewish museum in Europe and one of the must-see in Berlin. Go through two thousand years of Jewish history in Germany and the contributions of this community to the culture, art and other fields. The 14 sections of the museum, ranging from Roman times to the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment and Emancipation to the Holocaust, and so on until the emergence of the new Jewish community in Germany.
There is only one part dealing directly with the Holocaust, but its horror is reflected in the architecture of the building concerned. Designed by Daniel Libeskind, is a metaphor for the troubled history of the Jewish people.
The symbolism continues in the interior. A steep stairway down to the three passages that cross inhospitable called “axis”. The axis of the garden that leads to exile from exile and emigration, a field of concrete columns with a sloping olive top of the column. There is the axis of the Holocaust that led to the Holocaust Tower, one of several gaps in the museum, burial spaces that symbolize the loss of humanity, culture and life.
The director of the museum is Professor W. Michael Blumenthal, who is originally from Berlin and was US Secretary of the Treasury under President Jimmy Carter.