Märkisches Museum (Berlin)

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Märkisches Museum
Märkisches Museum Berlin.jpg
Building complex of the Märkisches Museum
Data
place Berlin-Mitte coordinates: 52 ° 30 '48.8 "  N , 13 ° 24' 53.6"  EWorld icon
Art
historical Museum
architect Ludwig Hoffmann
opening 1908
Website
ISIL DE-MUS-813014

The Märkische Museum is located in the Berlin district of Mitte . It is the main museum of the Stadtmuseum Berlin Foundation with a focus on culture and history.

history

prehistory

The history of the museum began with the accelerated development of Berlin from a somewhat sleepy residence to an industrial and large city. Between 1850 and 1870 the population doubled to over 800,000. The city needed a professional administration and a new town hall. In 1861 the foundation stone for a sufficiently spacious building was laid on Königstrasse , which later became the Red Town Hall . Its tower towered over the Berlin Palace , an expression of the new bourgeois self-confidence. At the same time, with the rapid change of the cityscape, an increased interest of the bourgeoisie in the history of the city developed, in what was lost or was just lost through reconstruction. This interest soon became an integral part of bourgeois sociability and was also expressed in the founding of the Association for the History of Berlin . It also included the first photographers in Berlin who documented the rapid changes in the city with the new medium. They made copies of their recordings available to the association and later to the museum. This resulted in one of the first systematic photographic collections that aimed at the physiognomy of the city itself and its architecture. Some of the pictures by the photographer F. Albert Schwartz can be seen today as reproductions in the Spittelmarkt underground station .

Before the administration moved to the new town hall, an inventory had to be made in the old offices, cellars and storehouses. Much was destroyed, others, if they looked particularly old or valuable, were first handed over to the archive and then to the newly established Collections department. The city councilor Ernst Friedel was appointed head of the department , who brought his own historical finds from the province of Brandenburg into the municipal collection and on October 9, 1874 founded the Märkisches Provincial Museum in Palais Podewils , the first purely bourgeois museum in Berlin independent of the royal family. It had a budget of only 2,000  marks and was therefore dependent on foundations and donations from the start. The emperor later approved his own budget for the purchase of photographic images of the cityscape.

Provisional arrangements

Reliefs by the architect Ludwig Hoffmann (left) and the city councilor Ernst Friedel in the courtyard of the museum

The collection was housed extremely cramped in the town hall. The first visitor regulations from 1875 named under point one opening times of two or three hours on three days a week, stipulated under point two: "The visit is free, the supervisors are prohibited from accepting gifts" and under point five: "Only clean dressed people have access ”. In a letter of appeal to the public, the management asked to support the museum "with voluntary donations of objects [...] if they are of cultural-historical interest". The appeal was surprisingly successful. Numerous objects of natural and cultural historical interest were donated. In Berlin during the Wilhelminian era , excavations were carried out in many places, useful finds repeatedly came to light and the collections increased. The museum moved from one temporary facility to the next due to a lack of space. Because of the cramped, chaotic-looking accommodation of the exhibits, the museum was viewed by many observers as a mere junk room, but not just with useless inventory: in 1878 the journeyman plumber and emperor assassin Max Hödel was executed with an executioner's ax borrowed from the museum .

Friedel also took the demonstratively demonstrated lack of space to help convince the public and the city administration of the need for a separate house for his museum. In 1892 a nationwide competition for a new building was announced. It was hoped that this would also signal a “new building” in the capital of the Reich; In the boom of the founding years, the classic Berlin shaped by Carl Gotthard Langhans and Karl Friedrich Schinkel had largely disappeared, a new architectural quality was not recognizable in the cityscape. The competition did not deliver either, and its result was generally rated as disappointing. 79 drafts were received, although a first prize was awarded, but it soon became apparent that this building would be much too expensive, the architect died shortly afterwards, and the whole project was initially sidelined.

Museum building

The building project was the first major contract for the Berlin city planner Ludwig Hoffmann, who was newly appointed in 1896 . He had earned his good reputation by designing the monumental building of the Reichsgericht in Leipzig and completing it in a short time, much to the satisfaction of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Roland statue (1474, copy from 1905) from Brandenburg
Information board on Roland of Brandenburg 1474, for a copy from 1905 at the Märkisches Museum

The first sketches were made in autumn 1896, the plans were approved a year later, and construction work began in 1899 and was completed in 1904. The fully furnished building could not be handed over until 1908. It was the first building in the world specifically designed as a city museum. Hoffmann's concept was to indicate in the architecture of the building what should be shown inside; the collections documented the development of the Margraviate of Brandenburg over the centuries, so the architect created a complex of very different parts of the building based on specific models from different historical epochs.

Part of a facade based on the model of the St. Catherine's Church in Brandenburg an der Havel
Partial view of the museum

Hoffmann had studied and sketched these models on many study trips and quoted them in his building with varying degrees of detail. In most cases, selected, historically correct details were combined in such a way that a new whole was created, the sources of which are not so easy to determine. Hoffmann was not necessarily interested in showing exact copies; he wanted to convey the respective moods of times past. Its buildings are grouped around two inner courtyards. These are surmounted and held together by a tower with a hipped roof , which is modeled on the keep of the Wittstock bishop's castle .

Inside the building, too, Hoffmann tried to make the moods of various historical situations perceptible through different presentations. The ground floor, for example, with its low vaults and rough plastered walls, suggested old age and housed the prehistoric department; Urns and hand axes were housed in roughly designed showcases. The collection of medieval altars and sculptures was in a "chapel", the vaults of which were modeled on medieval models. In a bright hall on the second floor, Rococo porcelain and the collection of snuff boxes were displayed in elegant glass cabinets . A total of around 50 showrooms could be visited.

History of the museum since 1908

Facade detail

The new building was praised from all sides, it met with great response from the public, with around 70,000 visitors annually. The museum - supported by an "Association for the Märkisches Museum", to which wealthy and prominent citizens belonged - became a fixture in the city's cultural life. World War I , revolution and inflation interrupted this development.

In 1925 Walter Stengel was appointed director, the first to be an art historian and museum manager with professional experience at the head of the house. He changed little in Hoffmann's productions ; so he finally had the showrooms illuminated electrically - even against the resistance of the architect, who was concerned about his carefully designed "moods" but could no longer intervene as a pensioner. Stengel directed the public's attention back to the museum primarily through spectacular special exhibitions, some of which were also outside his home. In 1928, the exhibition on the 70th birthday of the popular draftsman Heinrich Zille caused an unexpected mass rush from the backyard quarters of north Berlin, where Zille's preferred models lived - not the typical museum visitors.

During the National Socialist era , the Märkisches Museum also became part of the co - ordinated cultural establishment. Stengel made a pact with the new rulers - in the interests of the museum, as he understood it. He had objects of art from Jewish property acquired at foreclosures . When the state confiscated precious metal items from Jewish citizens in 1938, Stengel secured valuable antiques for his museum . These items were held in trust and not simply incorporated into the holdings, as was customary in various other museums at the time. At the beginning of the Second World War , the Märkisches Museum was closed, its collections relocated - much was lost in the process. The building itself was also badly damaged in the last days of the war.

Development after 1945

View of the Märkisches Museum at the Köllnischer Park , 1969
Exhibition in the Märkisches Museum, photo: Faruk Hosseini

After the end of the war, the museum was located in the Soviet- occupied sector of the four-power city of Berlin, on the area that would later become the "capital of the GDR ". War damage had to be repaired, and important finds had to be recovered from the rubble of the city . In 1946 some rooms could be reopened to visitors. Since there was a shortage of space due to the war damage and important parts of the natural history department were no longer available, it was decided to concentrate on the cultural history collections in the future.

In the interior of the house, the original spatial experience was largely lost in the following years due to new partition walls and false ceilings. There were also changes in the content work: the museum staff was supposed to provide a new perspective on history. A programmatic text demanded: "On the basis of the Marxist-Leninist worldview, the Märkisches Museum [...] should serve to build socialism ."

After the Berlin Wall was built in 1961 , after lengthy discussions, a separate Berlin Museum was established in West Berlin, with its seat in the baroque Kollegienhaus of the former Chamber Court on Lindenstrasse . The building of the collections was limited to objects of cultural history in order to be able to merge the two Berlin regional museums as easily as possible after the hoped-for reunification .

Development since German reunification

It took another five years from the first ideas and concepts in 1990 to the founding of the Stadtmuseum Foundation in 1995. 16 museum institutions were combined under the umbrella of the foundation, with the Märkisches Museum as the main focus. Extensive renovation and reconstruction work began there after 1990, the spacious attic storeys could be expanded, partition walls installed subsequently were removed so that essentially the old spatial structure devised by Ludwig Hoffmann can be experienced again.

present

In order to give the city museum of the federal capital its due place in the Berlin museum landscape, the Berlin Senate intends to concentrate the various locations in Mitte around the Märkisches Museum. This requires a structural expansion, for which the former naval house opposite was planned. Following a decision by the Senate in September 2008, the London office of Stanton Williams won the architectural competition for the renovation. In 2011, the financing of the extension was initially postponed by the Senate. After the final failure of the plans for the Marinehaus, the Stadtmuseum Berlin Foundation advocates developing the previous quarter of the Berlin City Library in the Breiten Straße into a museum quarter for a "New Berlin Museum" as soon as the planned new building of the central and state library the location on the Tempelhofer Feld has become vacant. Since the development of the Tempelhofer Feld can not be carried out due to the referendum , it was decided that the Märkisches Museum and the Marinehaus will form a unit in future and will be the heart of a new museum and creative quarter at the Köllnischer Park . At the beginning of 2020, the Märkisches Museum is to be closed for extensive renovation by the end of 2023 / beginning of 2024.

The history of the city of Berlin is told in the Märkisches Museum. In the museum laboratory of the Märkisches Museum, which opened in 2009, the Stadtmuseum Berlin offers interested groups a selected guided tour and workshop program. Dialogue one-hour tours provide various insights into Berlin's city history. Thematic workshops deepen the exhibition content in the museum laboratory. The museum, which was extensively reconstructed after war damage, has been made fit for the 21st century since autumn 2016. In addition to newly created space for changing special exhibitions, this includes a new concept for the permanent exhibition on Berlin's history, which is to be presented on the occasion of its 110th anniversary. The opening exhibition for this was Berlin in 1937 . The permanent exhibition “BerlinZEIT - history compact” has been leading through Berlin's history from the Ice Age to the present since June 2018 . The exhibition is accompanied by an audio guide in German or English in which the city itself speaks to the visitors. New paths are also broken through (rehearsal) rooms, which offer insights into museum work as a new way of communicating.

In the inner courtyard of the Märkisches Museum, the figure of the Rhine is placed, which corresponds to the equestrian statue of Friedrich Wilhelm III. belonged in the pleasure garden .

literature

  • Nikolaus Bernau , Kai Michel: The Märkisches Museum. Berlin Edition in the Quintessenz Verlags-GmbH, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-8148-0021-4 .
  • Knut Brehm, Bernd Ernsting, Wolfgang Gottschalk, Jörg Kuhn: Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, catalog of sculptures 1780–1920. Letter writings, Cologne 2003.
  • Kurt Winkler (ed.): Felt history. 100 years of the Märkisches Museum. Edition City Museum “Berlin Objects”. Verlag M, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-9812257-0-9 .
  • Märkisches Museum, Berlin . In: Neubauten der Stadt Berlin , Vol. 8, 1909. (In the online archive of the Architekturmuseum der TU Berlin , floor plans, exterior views and details)

Web links

Commons : Märkisches Museum  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Roland in Berlin
  2. Decision in the architectural competition, Berlin Senate, September 19, 2008
  3. ^ Senate refuses to pay for the Archaeological Center and Märkisches Museum - Neglected Center. In: Berliner Zeitung , October 6, 2012
  4. Director and chief curator Paul Spies presents the future strategy for the Stadtmuseum Berlin. In: Stadtmuseum Berlin, press releases , July 16, 2016
  5. ^ Christian Schröder: New permanent exhibition in the Märkisches Museum, one hour, 20,000 years . In: Der Tagesspiegel , June 8, 2018
  6. Museum open . In: Berliner Zeitung , June 4, 2018.
  7. Permanent exhibition "BerlinZEIT". Retrieved August 12, 2019
  8. stadtmuseum.de, accessed: October 26, 2017