Collection of Classical Antiquities at the Altes Museum

Antikensammlung im Alten Museum

Greek and Roman art and sculptures can be found in the Altes Museum. The main highlights, the art of the Etruscans, will go on show when major restoration work on the building has been completed. Until then an exhibition of Greek works of art is open to the public on the newly designed main floor of the building. This thematically arranged exhibition includes stone sculptures, clay and bronze figures, friezes, vases, gold jewellery and silverware. Three information displays provide details on additional topics such as Greek myths, ancient city culture and the archaeological sites investigated by the Berlin museums.

Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection in the Neues Museum

The Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection has a chance to present itself on a scale never shown until now, with over 2 500 exhibits on display in the Neues Museum's northern wing over three floors, covering 3600m².
The conception and design of the display collection affords a comprehensive insight into the continuity and changes of Ancient Egyptian culture over four millennia as well as the cultural history of Ancient Sudan. The tomb architecture and relief art of the Old Kingdom are revealed in a unique way through the reconstruction of several chambers of offering. As well as illustrating various key cultural aspects, such as the cult of death and the gods, royalty and everyday life, the scholarly history of Egyptologyitself is also presented and outlined in depth for the first time. In the "Library of Antiquity", the Papyrus Collection presents a selection of highly significant texts and literary works taken from the culture of writing that stretches all the way from Ancient Egypt down to Late Antiquity.

Presented by:
Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection

Sculpture Collection and Museum of Byzantine Art

The Museum of Byzantine Art owns a first-class collection of art works and utility objects from late Antiquity and the Byzantine period. It is the only one of its kind within Germany. The focus of the collection is on art of the Western Roman and Byzantine Empires dating from the third to the fifteenth century. Additionally, there are a large number of post-Byzantine icons and small art works.

St. Florian versus Roter Hahn - Zur Geschichte der Zehlendorfer Feuerwehr

The History of Fire Department of the district “Zehlendorf”

Music Ethnology

Since November 2007, the Department of Music Ethnology of the Ethnological Museum is being presented in a newly designed exhibition.

The phonogram archive comprises more than 16,000 original recordings and around 2,000 shellac records from all kinds of regions of the world.

Collection of South, Southeast and Central Asian Art

The Collection of South, Southeast and Central Asian Art houses one of the most important collections worldwide of art from the Indo-Asian cultural area, from the 4th millenium BC to the present. This extensive geographic region includes, next to India, the regions Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, the Autonomous Regions Tibet and Xinjiang of the People's Republic of China, the Southeast Asian countries of Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, as well as the Indonesian Islands.

The Collection

The formative, and almost exclusive, influence on Indian art is religion. The three main religions - Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism - are represented in the Collection of South, Southeast and Central Asian Art in the form of outstanding stone sculptures and reliefs, bronze works and terracotta pieces. With regard to the rich iconography of images of deities, the museum's collection may well be the most sophisticated outside of India. The oldest art works it contains come from Buddhist and Hindu religious buildings of the first centuries AC. The collection's Jain art and the largest part of its Hindu sculpture, on the other hand, originate from temples of the classic period or the middle ages, through to around the 13th century. As part of the redesign of the exhibition space in the year 2000, architectural features of the round stupa and the rectangular temple - the two central units of Indian religious architecture - were integrated into the layout.

As from the 12th century, Islam joined the other main religions in India. During the period of Islamic rule in India, Indian craft prospered. Metal work, ceramics, wood carvings, ivory and jade works, as well as precious textiles bear testimony to this heyday. Gorgeously coloured miniatures from the Mughal period round off the exhibition. Within the field of book art, the museum distinguishes itself through its comprehensive collection of paintings from all four of India's main religions.

The art of the Himalayan countries of Nepal and Tibet is represented by fabric painting (so-called Thangkas), wood sculptures and bronzes. The demon-like gods of protection of the 18th century are characteristic of late Tantric Buddhism.

The Southeast Asian collection includes stone and bronze figures, glazed clay reliefs, as well as grave finds from prehistoric times (3rd to 1st millenium BC), ceramic vessels, and bronze or glass jewellery.

The heart of the collection, and at the same time the architectural focus of the exhibition, is the world-famous "Turfan collection", named after the first of the four Royal Prussian expeditions to the northern Silk Road, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China between 1902 and 1914. The murals, the paintings on fabric and paper, and the clay and wood sculptures of the 3rd to 13th centuries for the most part originate from Buddhist temples. The focal point of this section is the full-scale reconstruction of a square temple decorated with original murals from Cave 123 at the oasis of Kucha.

History

Already in the 19th century, then still under the direction of the Museum für Völkerkunde (Ethnological Museum), Indo-Asian cultural objects were collected systematically. It was not until the period between 1900 and the outbreak of the First World War, however, that more prominent art works were acquired by the Berlin museums. This coincided with a growing interest in Indian culture and, as a result, significant German contributions to research in the field. Between 1902 and 1914, the indologist Albert Grünwedel and the turkologist Albert von LeCoq, researchers of the museums' Indian Department (an independent branch since 1904), carried out four expeditions to the northern Silk Road. They returned to Berlin with unique objects - known as the "Turfan collection" - which, for the first time, offered a vivid impression of the religious and cultural life of the far-away regions of eastern Central Asia in the first millenium AC.

While the First World War had already forestalled the continuation of the Silk Road expeditions, the Second World War caused extensive losses in the Museum of Indian Art's collection (over 2,100 inventory numbers are still listed as artworks lost during the war, many numbers including more than one object). In 1956/57, objects confiscated in the American and British zones of occupation were returned to the collection. A number of art works which the Red Army had taken to the Soviet Union after the end of the war made their way into the Grassi Museum in Leipzig in 1978, and from there they returned to Berlin in 1990. In 2002, the storerooms of the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg revealed around 20 percent of the missing parts of the collection.

In 1963, the Indian Department, previously part of the ethnological collection, was given independent status as an art museum, doing justice to the importance of Indo-Asian high cultures within world cultural heritage. With this step, the first independent research institute for Indo-Asian art was created in Germany.

After the building of a new museum complex at Berlin-Dahlem, the Museum für Indische Kunst was able to present its collections in their own exhibition space for the first time. Since then, new acquisitions, gifts and loans from private collections have been added. Since the year 2000, the newly designed permanent exhibition presents around 400 exhibits from a collection including a total of nearly 20,000 objects. The integration of elements of Indo-Asian religious architecture, the round stupa and the rectangular temple, as well as the use of grey quartzite imported from India, lends the exhibition space an atmosphere of the lands of the art's origin.

Presented by:

Asian Art Museum

German History in Images and Artefacts from Two Millenia

The show offers a sweeping survey of two thousand years of German history and opens a new chapter in the museum’s own history. Eight thousand selected exhibits from the Museum’s own collections, many of them unique historical artefacts, will convey a lively and attractive impression of events past.

The exhibition covers 7,500 m² and is divided into two parts. The period from the first century AD to the abdication of the Kaiser in 1918 is presented on the first floor, while the ground floor houses the sections relating to the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era, the Cold War period and the two German states up to the withdrawal of the Allies in 1994.
The exhibits are objects of significance from almost all fields of the historical legacy: documents, paintings and other works of art, books, posters, textiles, furniture, machines and a wide variety of everyday objects, to name but a few. In the methodology of the permanent exhibition these exhibits serve as more than mere illustrations of the historical events. They are presented, explained and placed in their wider context as pieces of history in their own right, focusing on their specific character as historical evidence. This approach produces a unique form of reconstruction of historical relationships and processes, one that speaks directly to the viewer. Rather than presenting a German-centred view, the exhibition consistently places German history in its European context, giving consideration to the many different forms of exchange and political and cultural networking with neighbouring states.

Numerous multimedia elements, models and educational stations deepen and expand the wealth of information on offer.

Art from Africa

The Ethnological Museum presents its new permanent exhibition of "Art from Africa", starting from 27 August 2005. These masterpieces could previously be seen at the exhibition "Art from Africa" in Brazil in 2003/2004. That exhibition attracted more than a million visitors, and won two awards.
The concept, arrangement and presentation of the exhibition emphasises the significance of art as a central component of the different cultures of Africa. It is arranged in four large groups, starting with an introduction to aspects of the African history of art, followed by figures, performance and design.

The new permanent exhibition makes clear that art from Africa has its own art-historical development, which the Western world failed to understand or recognise for a long time. African art was instead regarded as primitive - a stigma based on the ideology of the colonial age.
Beyond that the exhibition points out that art from Africa, in addition to its religious significance, had a multiplicity of functions in African societies.

Presented by:

Ethnological Museum

The Empire of the Incas

Starting in the early 15th century, the Inca rulers soon managed to conquer a gigantic region within an incredibly short period of time. Their empire encompassed more than 100 different ethnic groups in what are today Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and northern Argentina, each with different social and political organizational structures and different languages.

The newly designed section of the exhibition on South American archaeology examines the principles and mechanisms of imperial ideology: what was the nature of the ties between the rulers and the subdued populations? How did the Incas control and secure this immense empire up to the arrival of the Spaniards?

The new exhibition contains over 60 objects of Inca culture, among them knotted cords the Incas used for surveying, rare fabrics, typical clay vessels, stone works and artfully crafted gold and silver works. Each artefact tells of the role it played in stabilizing imperial dominance and maintaining control.

Presented by:

Ethnological Museum

We Are One People. Medals on the Fall of the Wall and Reunification

Marking the 20th anniversary of German unity, this exhibition sees a range of medals go on display that were created in the momentous years of 1989 and 1990. Various artists from both the East and West of the country had their impressions of moving occurrences in German history cast in metal in the immediate aftermath of the events of 1989.

It is quite rare for a pivotal moment in a country's history to be so emphatically and representatively captured for and by the art of that particular country. The exhibition will be first go on show from 19 March to 9 April 2010 in Speyer, in the Stadt- und Kreissparkasse bank, before being on permanent display in the Bode Museum from 17 April 2010. The first stage of the exhibition was officially opened by Bernhard Vogel, the long-serving minister-president of the states of Rheinland-Pfalz and Thüringen.

Presented by:

Numismatic Collection

It’s Enough for 8 Groschen ...

Coins and medals reflect the history of Prussia and its great king in an immediate way: quite literally in the palms of our hands. No other European monarch wrought such wide-reaching changes to his country's coinage and monetary system as Frederick II of Prussia. With his coinage reforms of 1750 and 1764, he not only set Prussia on a new course, but also significantly paved the way for later monetary developments in the rest of Germany.
By radically debasing the currency, specifically of specie (by lowering the quantity of precious metals in newly minted coins), he managed to finance the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). He was just as radical in overhauling the Prussian currency after the war. The mints went from being half-private companies to efficient, state-run money factories. Under Frederick II, gold coins and larger silver coins were standardised across the country in a process that started in 1750. The diversity of territories under Prussian control and their various types of coins and monetary systems are reflected in the coins of the time. The coin portraits of Frederick II reveal a lot about the image of the ruler - from handsome young man in the year of his coronation in 1740 up to his death in 1786, by which time he was dubbed 'Old Fritz'. Besides his great battles and victories, various other kinds of events that took place during his reign are captured on his medals.

The Numismatic Collection holds over 3500 coins from the time of Frederick the Great, thus making it not only the largest, but also the most complete collection of its kind in the world. This particular collection will be published for the first time in its entirety, in a combination of print and online catalogues to mark the celebrations surrounding Frederick II's birth. The result means that the public now has unprecedented access to this historical source on the life of Frederick the Great.

The exhibition is being held as part of a wider series of events called 'Art - King - Enlightenment', coordinated by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in honour of the 300th anniversary of the birth of Frederick the Great on 24 January 2012.

Presented by:
Numismatic Collection

Ceramic and Glass

The storerooms of the Museum of Byzantine Art contain an array of ceramics and several surprisingly well preserved glass objects from the East Roman Empire. Most of these objects have never been placed on public display before. Several selected ceramics and some glassware from Egypt and Asia Minor are now on display in rooms 110 and 113 of the Bode Museum.
Several painted and, in some instances, unusually shaped terracotta vessels represent the diversity of pottery craftsmanship in late antique and early Christian Egypt. The earliest examples of glazed ceramic from the Byzantine Empire with ornamentation executed either in paint, scratched plaster (sgraffito) or enamelling in the champlevé technique, date back to the 8th century. The works became markedly more popular from the 10th century onwards and often feature added dots of color that stand up from the ceramic surface.

Like ceramic, glassware was also often part of the smaller finds in excavations of former Byzantine settlements. Together, these artefacts are a testament to the rich diversity of forms and styles of decoration in the multifaceted Byzantine culture of dining.

Presented by:
Sculpture Collection and Museum of Byzantine Art

Fashioning fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700 – 1915

An exhibition of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the German Historical Museum

Project management: Dr. Regine Falkenberg, Dr. Tim Urban

With Fashioning fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915 the German Historical Museum is presenting – exclusively in Germany – a unique collection of historical garments and accessories from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. More than 200 years of European fashion history are on display. The renowned Belgian scenographer Bob Verhelst has specially designed the exhibition architecture for Berlin. Glamorous women’s costumes and elegant men’s suits are adorned with elaborately fashioned trimmings. Luxurious clothing of the wealthy haute-bourgeoisie and nobility are shown, including such highlights as the gold-embroidered dress of a Portuguese queen and the turban of the designer Paul Poiret. Fascinating fabrics, exquisitely tailored raiments and precious décor are all to be seen in the museum’s show.

The spectacular exhibition takes us through four chapters focusing on the aesthetic and technical developments of fashion history:

Timeline shows in chronological sequence the changes in the silhouette of women’s dresses and the evolution of men’s suits from brightly coloured to their traditional dark hue.

Textiles informs us about the variety of surfaces that come about through complex weaving, colouring and printing techniques.

Tailoring deals with the process of turning plain material into clothing, with special emphasis on forming, bracing and constricting techniques.

Trim presents the finery of fashionable clothes: delicate laces, magnificent fine-wire embroidery, artful silk trimmings and colourfully patterned and sequined accessories.

Frederick the Great – respected, revered, reviled …

Friedrich II of Prussia – known as Frederick the Great – is one of the most distinctive figures in German history and culture of remembrance. It is the image of “Old Fritz” above all that has marked the German collective memory up to the present day. Yet in the more than 200 years since the death of the Prussian king this memory has been re-evaluated and exploited in many different ways: he was seen as the first servant of the state and as philosopher on the throne, was idolized as military commander and national hero, and later vilified as warmonger and misanthrope. The major temporary exhibition of the German Historical Museum takes the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Prussian king to present an extensive examination of Friedrich’s legacy in art, politics and society. Around 600 objects from Germany and abroad will reflect the eventful history of the sovereign’s reception over time and provide a fascinating survey of Prussian-German and European cultural memory.

Of Dragons and Heroes

An exhibition for children aged 4 to 10.

Tales of dragons and heroes are fantastical and real at once, colourful and faded, brash and gentle, grand and pithy. They've already been told a thousand times before, can be read out loud, acted out and or become the stuff of painting. But they can also be newly invented and told for the first time. In our museum, we've got a host of dragon-slayers, proud knights and women saints, just waiting to be discovered.

Saint George, that most eminent of dragon-slayers, has many exciting adventures to retell. But besides him, there were a few women saints able to tame the odd dragon too. So just what is it that makes a hero?

Dragons and heroes are all on show in this exhibition in the Children's Gallery, where a fantastical world entices young visitors to join in by telling or hearing tales, by playing and touching, or by painting and making puzzles. And, last but not least, there's a dragon's skeleton on show that needs some beautifully painted dragon scales to cover it and to bring it to life for us to admire.

Presented by:

Besucher-Dienste der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin

The Silver Treasury of the Luxembourg Dynasty

An exhibition of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg in cooperation with the German Historical Museum


The exhibition brings together the most beautiful and historically important treasures of the Grand Duchy’s Silver Treasury, many of which are being presented in public for the first time. The occasion for this unique show in the Permanent Exhibition of the German Historical Museum is the state visit of TRH the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Luxembourg to the Federal Republic of Germany. A richly illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

Museum for Pre- And Early History with objects from the Collection of Classical Antiquities

The Museum of Prehistory and Early History presents its expansive collection together with objects from the Collection of Classical Antiquities on three floors of the Neues Museum.

Visitors are greeted on the ground floor by the room entitled "Odin, Urns, Looted Art", which presents the 180 year old history of the museum, with preserved wall paintings depicting scenes from Nordic mythology. The following room is dedicated to Heinrich Schliemann, who bequeathed his collection of Trojan antiquities to the museum "for their eternal preservation". The room beyond that reveals how various influences in the art and culture of Cyprus conflated in a unique way on the island.

On the first floor, the museum's piano nobile, the visitor is led from the Roman bronze statue of the Xanten Boy, into "The Roman Provinces". From there, the visitor has access to the "Pantheon" - Chipperfield's new South Dome Room, in which two colossal statues of divinities from the 2nd century AD originating from the Egyptian city of Lycopolis await visitors. The next room, "Rome's Northern Neighbours" is dedicated to the tensions between Rome and the Germanic peoples, while "Migration Period and Middle Ages" provides an insight into the time from the Migration Period to the Carolingian Renaissance.

The second floor takes the visitor back to the earliest history of humankind: from the Stone Age, with the famous finds of the Neanderthal from Le Moustier and of modern man from Combe Capelle, through the Neolithic Period and into the Bronze Age. The Berlin Gold Hat exerts a particular fascination here, whose secret symbolism illustrates how exactly calendric knowledge was preserved even so long ago. The tour ends in the Ice Age, with its rich Scythian and Celtic finds. The study collection in historical cabinets from the 19th century complement the exhibition.

Presented by:

Museum of Prehistory and Early History
Collection of Classical Antiquities

Italia Antiqua

The moment has arrived: this June sees the dramatic rearrangement of the archaeological collections on the Museum Island that began with the Neues Museum now enter its next chapter. Until extensive renovation work on the Altes Museum begins a few years from now, the Collection of Classical Antiquities will display on the upper floor its impressive collection of Etruscan and Roman art to an extent never before seen.

The world renowned Berlin Etruscan collection - one of the largest outside Italy - has not been on permanent display since 1939. Complete tomb finds and magnificent objects of Etruscan art are now on view in the south and east rooms of the Altes Museum. Late Hellenistic cremation urns and sarcophagi, with their original painted surfaces still in tact, form a bridge to the section on Roman tomb art, where visitors will encounter a few old favourites such as the Medea sarcophagus from the Pergamonmuseum. The transferral of Roman art from the Pergamonmuseum is just the first stage in a gradual process which will see the building cleared for renovations, with the Greek sculptures due to follow in the second half of the year.

The Roman art on display in the Altes Museum's north and west rooms will not merely include sculptures, but will also feature mummy portraits, exquisite silverware, cosmetic utensils made of glass and jewellery. For years, many of these objects had been lying dormant in storerooms due to a lack of exhibition space. They now form charming juxtapositions with other pieces in an exhibition which explores such themes as the villa, the Forum and art in the imperial court.

Museum of Islamic Art at Pergamon Museum

The Museum of Islamic Art is situated in the south wing of the Pergamonmuseum. Its permanent exhibition is dedicated to the art of Islamic peoples from the eighth to the nineteenth century. The works of art originate from the vast area stretching from Spain to India. The collection's main focus is on the Middle East including Egypt and Iran.
The broad spectrum of the collection includes architectural decorations, applied arts and crafts, jewelry, and rare illuminated and calligraphed manuscripts. The architectural decorations represent one of the major attractions, conveying also typical concepts of space and environments in various media: stone (the façade from Mshatta), stuccoes (archaeological finds from Samarra), painted wooden panelling (Aleppo Room) and wall ceramics in various techniques (prayer niches from Kashan and Konya).

The applied arts include works in all possible materials: ceramic vessels, metalwork, carvings in wood and bone, glasses, textiles, carpets. Within the area of books and ancient writings, the calligraphic works and miniatures from albums of Mogul times are of particular significance.

Presented by:
Museum of Islamic Art

Museum of the Ancient Near East in the Pergamon Museum

The Museum of the Ancient Near East ranks alongside the Louvre and the British Museum as one of the world's leading museums of ancient oriental treasures. Shown in an area covering 2,000 square metres the exhibits convey an impression of six thousand years of history, culture and art in the ancient Near East.
Fourteen rooms are devoted to this collection in the southern wing of the Pergamonmuseum. The collection contains many important examples of architecture, reliefs and smaller objects. Some are of great world significance and were once excavated by German archaeologists. They originate from the Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian and northern Syrian/eastern Anatolian regions which today include Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.

One of the major attractions lies along the main axis of this section of the museum. Here visitors can walk through and wonder at the world-famous reconstructions of brilliantly coloured Babylonian monuments: the Processional Way, the Ishtar Gate and the facade of the throne hall of King Nebuchadnezzar II (604 - 562 BC). Sections of the buildings were re-created to approximately the original dimensions by meticulously re-assembling the many broken pieces of excavated glazed bricks. Along the walls depictions of lions, bulls and dragons symbolize the major gods of Babylon.

The main attractions in the Babylonian Hall include the model of the Tower of Babel which was dedicated to Marduk, the chief god of the city, and a copy of the famous stela bearing the laws of King Hammurabi.

Presented by:
Museum of the Ancient Near East