Architecture and History in Germany

The opening of the Neues Museum in Berlin, so deftly restored by the British architect, David Chipperfield, means that for the first time since the Second World War all five buildings on the Museumsinsel (Museum Island) will be once again open to the general public.

No way was Chancellor Angela Merkel going to miss the chance to honour the Queen of Berlin with her presence. Nefertiti has now moved into her new residence and the museum’s director, Dietrich Wildung, ensured that the beautiful queen was treated with kid gloves when the curators of the Egyptian Museum were transporting their most precious exhibit to its new location. Nefertiti is now holding court in the restored, restyled and rebuilt Neues Museum, where she awaits the tribute of the tens of thousands of Berliners and people from all over the world when they come to pay homage to her.
The history of her new palace is without precedent. The Neues Museum was the 19th century’s most significant and splendid museum of art, but in the war it was half destroyed, most of it a victim to the flames, and since then has remained an empty ruin in the heart of the city.

An eloquent witness of the times

In GDR times they planned to demolish it and replace it with a kind of mini-version of the socialist Palace of the Republic, but the project never got off the ground – like all the other plans to rebuild it. This was indeed fortunate for us all, as what the British architect, David Chipperfield, and his fellow-Londoner and head of the restoration team, Julian Harrap, have created and what the monument conservators, craftsmen and construction workers have achieved is truly without precedent. They proved that a destroyed historical building does not necessarily have to be faithfully rebuilt “true to the original” in order to put it back on the map.

They demonstrated that by restoring, conserving, carefully enhancing and adding new elements it can be turned into an eloquent witness of the times it has been through – a place where history is revealed much the same way we turn the pages of a book. Even on Open Day back in March visitors poured into the building, crowding along the four floors that were still empty and staring in amazement at the fruits of Chipperfield’s labours. The way he had captured and secured the remains of frescoes and bestowed them with a new dignity, the way he had inserted missing construction elements to re-establish a certain spatial impression without copying anything. The way he had made concrete seem almost like sandstone, the way he had had a new dome constructed – the like of which had never been seen before.

Breathtaking exhibits

Now the collections have moved in: that of the Egyptian Museum, that of the Museum for Pre and Early History, as well as that of the Museum of Classical Antiquities. It has now become quite clear that, in this new atmosphere exuding its own fateful past, the breathtaking exhibits like the monumental god of the sun, Helios, and beautiful Queen Teje; like Anubis and Hatshepsut; like the 2,800-year-old “Berliner Goldhut” (Berlin Gold Hat) and jewellery from down the centuries, as well as the many ceramic pieces, coins and papyrus documents have all been allowed to retain two decisive characteristics – their vulnerability and their temporality. This would not have been possible had they been on display in a new, abstractly sterile museum.

The visitor is almost physically able to feel the breath of history and connect with it via the rooms and the exhibits. This experience with the past is possibly much stronger now than was ever envisaged in the original concept that was developed for the opening in 1850 by Friedrich August Stüler, a student of the Berlin architect, Karl Friedrich Schinkel. He took the visitor away from reality and placed him in a dramatically staged past, presenting the rooms as illusionist curiosity cabinets. It was not always clear what was the original and what was theatrical scenery, nor was the presentation always academically sound. A few fragments from this time have managed to survive, some were discovered hidden under later wall coverings and were painstakingly restored. In the Red Room the collection can still be seen the way it was presented 150 years ago in wonderful glass showcases, thus turning the Neues Museum into a centre for the history of museum exhibiting.

The visitor will need more than one day if he or she is to fully experience the impact of the epic collections. Be it the cellar vaulting over the Greek and Egyptian Courtyards that has been incorporated into the overall museum setting, be it the central stairway newly designed by Chipperfield in true Mesopotamian glory, be it Nefertiti’s throne room in the North Dome Hall or even the early historical collection on the fourth level that, in the somewhat quieter setting of wooden floors and low ceilings, aspires to educational methods in its quest for contact with science.

A general assembly of the gods

The Neues Museum was in fact also one of the projects of European Enlightenment, a place where the art and cultures of other peoples and times were imparted, contrasted and compared. In the room called “God and Gods”, for example, deities from three millennia and from four continents have convened for a general assembly and bear witness to one of man’s all-time fundamental experiences. The spirit of the Humboldt brothers that they are endeavouring to revive by the reconstruction of the Berlin City Palace and the creation of the Humboldt Forum can already be tangibly felt at the Neues Museum.

The Neues Museum cost the German government 200 million euros in federal funding. The construction of the James-Simon-Galerie entrance building, also designed by David Chipperfield, the subterranean corridors connecting all the museums known as the “archaeological promenade”, as well as the extensive redevelopment of the Pergamon Museum which is due to be completed by 2026 will make sure that the building sites on the Museumsinsel will be with us for quite some time to come.