Museum Neukölln

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Museum Neukölln
Gutshof Britz Museum Neukölln (Alice Chodura) .JPG
Data
place Berlin , Alt-Britz 81, 12359 Berlin
Art
Museum of cultural history
opening October 1, 1897
operator
District Office Neukölln of Berlin
management
Udo Goesswald
Website
ISIL DE-MUS-017310

The Museum Neukölln (until 2004 Heimatmuseum Neukölln ) is a museum in the Berlin district of Britz that deals with the history of the Neukölln district . After the Märkisches Museum , the collection is considered the second oldest regional history museum in Berlin. After having moved several times, it has been on the former Britz estate since 2010 .

history

Beginning as a natural history school museum in 1897

On October 1, 1897, the Rixdorf elementary school teacher Emil Fischer (1865–1932) opened the Natural History School Museum in the old Rixdorf schoolhouse on Hohenzollernplatz (today: Karl-Marx-Platz). Its foundation is a direct response to the educational and socio-political deficits of the working class town of Rixdorf. Equipped with visual material for geography lessons, information about distant countries and natural history demonstration objects, it was primarily used for schools.

With the founding of the Association of Friends of the Neukölln Museum on October 22, 1921, the museum found the ideal and material support to turn it into an educational and teaching institute in Neukölln. In 1922, the collection was expanded for the first time with the acquisition of historical objects and technical and industrial products.

Under the new museum director Felix Woldt, the exhibits were examined scientifically and the museum was reopened in 1934 as the “Neukölln School and Local History Museum” . The National Socialists seized the idea of ​​home that Emil Fischer had propagated and renamed the museum in 1936 after its founder. The Second World War destroyed considerable parts of the museum holdings, which were rebuilt after the end of the war with an annual budget of 1,500  DM .

In the early 1960s, the museum moved into the vacant rooms of the city library on Ganghoferstraße. The building was built from 1912 as a city library together with the Stadtbad Neukölln .

New concept in 1985

After Dorothea Kolland became head of the Neukölln Art Office in 1981 , she succeeded in activating the museum as a place for regional historical research. From 1982 and in the course of the upcoming 750th anniversary of Berlin, the museum was redesigned in collaboration with Udo Gößwald. As the thematic core of the research work, the social and cultural history of Neukölln should be focused and its presentation improved in line with the times.

“It should be a lively place for everyone to deal with the history of the city of Neukölln and its cultural phenomena in the past and present. Based on Emil Fischer's idea, a modern museum is to be set up, 'not for the elite, but for the people. It must address, take in, hold on to linger and contemplate, stimulate cooperation and force you to return. "

With the redesign of 1985, the self-image of the museum was redefined. In this way, different topics were worked out historically and systematically on a project basis, be it the biography of people, urban spaces, buildings, companies or institutions. Different media were used again and again - for example in exhibitions, catalogs, films, newspapers, games, concerts or city tours. And wherever it made sense, the audience was included as an author in the exhibition projects.

The focus on decentralized cultural work continues to be an essential part of the new concept. It is essential to actively integrate the local people into the work and to support them in dealing with their past and present for themselves. Museum educational activities, especially those related to schools, have since played an important role in the museum concept. The hiring of two museum teachers, who teach half of their working hours in the school and the other half in the museum, is groundbreaking.

The Council of Europe recognized these activities as well as the collection and its presentation in 1987 by awarding it the Museum Prize . The museologist and jury member Friedrich Waidacher commented in his speech at the award ceremony:

“What we are constantly looking for during our travels across Europe is, let me say, humanity - as it can be and through a museum; is concern for the intrinsic dignity of nature, of man, of history, and his creations. And we are also looking initiative, ideas, creativity, and - above all - continuity. "

The move to the former Britz estate on May 26, 2010 sparked controversial debates beforehand. On the one hand, a change of location from the infrastructural well-connected center of North Neukölln was classified as a risk factor with regard to decreasing visitor numbers. On the other hand, new spatial possibilities have emerged to better implement the guiding principles anchored in the 1985 concept. The former horse and ox barn was rebuilt and refurbished for the museum. The exhibition rooms are now on the ground floor, while the history store is housed in the archive and depot on the first floor. Despite all fears, the number of visits has increased significantly and in 2015 reached over 22,000 visits.

The Museum Neukölln has been coordinating the stumbling blocks for the Neukölln district since 2013 .

Exhibitions

In the exhibitions on the history of the district, aspects of the present and the future are always incorporated in order to train a critical examination of one's own history. The 1985 exhibition “Junkers, Land and People” culminated in the problems of global agriculture today. At “Blickpunkt Karl-Marx-Straße” in the same year, the exhibition organizers could not avoid addressing current problems of property speculation and city destruction in this very street.

But the Museum Neukölln has also remembered in many exhibitions those driving moments of history that have been forgotten or only rudimentarily treated: The 1993 exhibition “The Ideal School” included extensive research on the history of reform pedagogy in Neukölln. It became clear that in Neukölln a large variety of attempts were made to make schools more humane and to free them from unnecessary hierarchies. Tracing the lines of tradition in the history of human medicine in Neukölln was the most important task of the exhibition “The First Cry or How to Be Born in Neukölln” in 2000. For the first time, the history of the midwifery school, which was founded in Neukölln in 1917, was systematically processed , and the work of health politicians and doctors such as Richard Schminke, Hans Kollwitz and Käte Frankenthal , who campaigned for sex counseling centers as early as 1927, in which contraceptives were used free of charge.

In the exhibition “Reisefieber” from 2006, the museum opened another chapter in modern cultural history and presented it using a local example. The exhibition follows the stories of some Neukölln globetrotters and presents the most varied forms of travel.

The museum has presented a permanent exhibition for the first time since moving to Gutshof Britz . “99 × Neukölln” is an orientation exhibition that offers visitors of all ages the opportunity to get into the history and present of Neukölln. The central key of the conception is the individual object, which is questioned about its possible key function for a narrative context and assigned to various questions of temporal, topographical and thematic relevance. The result was a cosmos of Neukölln that brings together historical, social and political aspects of the district's past and present in a knowledge network. The collection of objects reflects the thematic focus of the museum, which is based on the one hand in the resistance movement in Neukölln during the Nazi regime and on the other in the various local reform traditions at the beginning of the 20th century in the fields of schools, health and housing. Furthermore, the topic of immigration is an aspect that has been integrated into the exhibition in a variety of ways.

At the same time, temporary exhibitions lasting several months, mostly oriented towards social and cultural history, take place, which in their development and presentation span the arc from history to the present. Even more explicitly than in the exhibition “99 x Neukölln”, reference was made in the exhibition project “Three Things of My Life” to the subjective meaning of things that Neukölln residents kept and made available for the exhibition. Using the example of the Hufeisensiedlung , the 2013 exhibition “The End of the Idyll?” Conclusively demonstrated how the National Socialists succeeded in infiltrating a left stronghold in Neukölln and systematically persecuting people.

In the second format of the temporary exhibition, which prefers artistic approaches, European dimensions are also repeatedly taken into account. In combination with a comprehensive program of events, cultural workers are given a platform to devote themselves to current issues of the time in a variety of ways. In 2014, Ursula Böhmer showed photographs of largely extinct cow breeds in the “All Ladies” exhibition. The portraits are symbolic of the diversity of agricultural cultures, which are also reminiscent of a common cultural history in Europe.

History memory

The history store , the archive and depot of the museum, is located on the top floor of the museum, under the roof . The cultural heritage of Neukölln's citizens is stored in the history store in the form of objects, photos, files and plans as well as electronic files. Its establishment is the prerequisite for an active form of dealing with history, which will give younger and older people alike the opportunity to learn through research. After registering, interested parties can do their own historical and cultural research.

Publications

Literature and Sources

  • Udo Gößwald (Ed.): Always home - 100 years of Neukölln local history museum. 1st edition. Opladen 1998, ISBN 3-8100-1943-7 .
  • Udo Gößwald (Ed.): Passages. The Museum Neukölln 1985–2015: Festschrift for the 30th anniversary of the new conception of the Museum Neukölln . Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-944141-18-3 .
  • Oliver Bätz, Udo Gösswald (ed.): Experiment Heimatmuseum. On the theory and practice of regional museum work. Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-922561-72-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dorothea Kolland: Neukölln and his museum . In: Oliver Bätz, Udo Gößwald (Ed.): Experiment Heimatmuseum. On the theory and practice of regional museum work . Berlin 1988, ISBN 978-3-922561-72-9 , pp. 20–29 , here p. 24 .
  2. ↑ Steffen Paul: People make museums - from the chronicle of the local museum . In: Udo Gößwald (Ed.): Always home again - 100 years of local history museum . Opladen 1998, ISBN 3-8100-1943-7 , p. 16–42, here p. 24 .
  3. ↑ Steffen Paul: People make museums - from the chronicle of the local museum . In: Udo Gößwald (Ed.): Always home again - 100 years of local history museum . Opladen 1998, ISBN 3-8100-1943-7 , p. 16–42, here p. 29 .
  4. ^ Conception of the Neukölln Museum for Urban Culture and Regional History (1984), excerpts . In: Oliver Bätz, Udo Gößwald (Ed.): Experiment Heimatmuseum . Berlin 1988, ISBN 978-3-922561-72-9 , pp. 118–123, here p. 118 .
  5. ^ Karl Hermann: In Rixdorf is music . In: Die Zeit , No. 33/1987
  6. ^ Friedrich Waidacher: Address on the occasion of the presentation of the Museum Prize of the Council of Europe 1986 to the Heimatmuseum Neukölln, FRG, on May 4th 1987 in the Salle Joséphine of the Orangery Strasbourg . In: Experiment Heimatmuseum . S. 124–125 , here p. 125 .
  7. ↑ Gabi Zylla: Museum Neukölln has to move . In: Berliner Morgenpost
  8. ↑ Udo Gößwald: A Museum of Life - 15 Passages . In: Udo Gößwald (Ed.): Passages. The Museum Neukölln 1985–2015: Festschrift for the 30th anniversary of the new conception of the Museum Neukölln . Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-944141-18-3 , pp. 4-8 .
  9. ↑ Dorothea Kolland, p. 28.
  10. ↑ History store - Museum Neukölln. (No longer available online.) In: museum-neukoelln.de. Archived from the original on February 3, 2016 ; accessed on February 2, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / museum-neukoelln.de

Coordinates: 52 ° 26 ′ 45.3 "  N , 13 ° 26 ′ 17"  E