All posts by Thomas Biggs

Showing or Telling: The Immersive-to-Informational Transformation of Museum Exhibits

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I have vivid memories of visiting the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas as a child in 2007. Fredericksburg, hometown of German-American and Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, hosts this expansive museum complex in honor of Nimitz’s role as Commander in Chief, United States Pacific Fleet in the Second World War. This museum complex includes the original Nimitz Hotel, with an exhibit about Nimitz’s life, and the George H.W. Bush Gallery, with a larger gallery covering the entirety of the Pacific Theatre of World War II. The old gallery as I remember it, featured three walk-through dioramas, each immersing oneself in a specific scene from the war: the deck of a Japanese submarine just before the attack on Pearl Harbor about to launch an authentic mini-submarine, the deck of the USS Hornet as it prepared to launch Lt. Col. James Doolittle’s B-25 bombers for the raid on Tokyo, and Henderson Field on Guadalcanal at night. Of these the Henderson Field display was the most memorable. The whole setting was dark to simulate night on the island, with ambient jungle sounds in the background. Shortly after entering, one would come across two mannequins of US Marines loading boxes. One was an animatronic, and pressing a button on one of the boxes would make him rotate his head and awkwardly move his plastic lips as a recorded voice spoke to you about the experience of Marines of Guadalcanal. Further on, a US aircrew of two mannequins repaired an authentic Wildcat fighter aircraft on one side of the path. On the other side, further way, was a wreckage of a Japanese aircraft. As one walked through this life-sized diorama, the sound effect of an approaching bomber aircraft could be heard in the distance, getting closer. The Japanese launched several single-aircraft night raids through the fall of 1942, with the sole intention to deprive the Marines of sleep. The bomber would be heard approaching, doing several low passes over the airfield, then dropping a single bomb. The “bomb” would explode off the path, violently rattling the wreckage with a flash of orange light. The experience was definitely scary for ten-year-old-me, and I remember it changing the way I thought about war. I had always been aware that war was terrible, but this diorama was the first thing that made me understand the terror of it. The darkness, the anticipation, and the suddenness of the explosion made it clear to me that death in this setting could have happened at any moment. It may seem ridiculous to think that a dated, decaying, and by today’s standards, kitschy museum display could have an effect like that. But it did on me. 

One can then imagine my disappointment when I visited the museum again in 2009, shortly after its highly-anticipated renovation. The new gallery was highly digitized, with many large-screen interactive displays, and colorful panel walls displaying blown-up photographs, maps, and blocks of text covering every aspect of the Pacific War. But the immersive experiences of the old museum had all been removed. The mini-submarine was now the centerpiece of an impressive audio-visual display, with film footage and some effects projected on a flat screen behind. The replica of the larger submarine that carries the mini-sub was however no longer there, along with the Hawaiian Islands mural that had accompanied both of them. The Guadalcanal diorama was completely gone. The Wildcat was still in the museum, but displayed on its own with no physical contextualization. Only the Doolittle Raid diorama survived in part: The B-25 was still there on what looked the deck of the Hornet, with the original mural still behind it, but with the mannequins and a significant piece of the flight deck removed.

The Doolittle Raid diorama at the National Museum of the Pacific War as it appears today.

I will admit that I was able to learn a lot from the new displays. Cutting the dioramas saved on space, allowing for the display of more artifacts and incorporation of new digital elements. The space between the dioramas in the old museum, from what I can remember, were very antiquated, with photographs and small text panels pasted onto walls, and less artifacts to be seen. But I still feel like something was lost with the removal of the immersive displays. A helmet in a display case, accompanied by text or a film explaining what it was, would not have brought me to that same understanding of the experience on Guadalcanal as that diorama did. 

It turns out that this phenomenon of increasing digitalization and decreasing physical displays has been a common story for museums on recent history. 

The Disappearing Diorama 

Dioramas, which portray a scene with a sculpted foreground that blends with an intricately painted background to create a three-dimensional illusion, became popular museum exhibits in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These physical displays, often made with exquisite craftsmanship, were an effective way to transport a museum visitor to another place or time before the age of widespread photography and film. The American Museum of Natural History in New York is world-famous for its intricate dioramas of animal taxidermies in their natural habitats. Indeed, nature and natural history are the most ubiquitous subjects of dioramas, with just about every such museum in the world exhibiting such displays. The Museum Koenig in Bonn, Germany even took the time in 2003 to restore all its animal dioramas to their original 1923 condition.1 They are still popular attractions, being one of the significant draws for visitors in the case of the AMNH and the Musuem Koenig. Old dioramas have become museum artifacts themselves as important a part of the heritage of a museum as the dinosaur bones or ancient pottery that accompany them. 

A wild boar diorama at the Museum Koenig in Bonn.

Dioramas portraying scenes of human history, however, are becoming increasingly hard to come by in the museums of Europe and the United States. Many have disappeared from museum displays since the start of this century, owing to several different reasons. One is a renewed emphasis on displaying actual artifacts over space consuming crafted displays. The Pennsylvania Military Museum in Boalsburg removed most of its walk-through World War I trench diorama in 2009 to make way for new exhibits covering other American conflicts and displaying more military artifacts (A small part of the trench does remain at the beginning of the museum gallery, and fortunately the background mural painted by a former German soldier in 1968 has also been retained).

The old trench diorama of the Pennsylvania Military Museum, dismantled since 2009.

Another reason is dioramas can inaccurately portray their subjects, especially if they are older. While natural history can be considered static, human history is very dynamic and perceptions of it are constantly changing. For example, several natural history museums have removed diorama displays of Native American cultures. This has been done because some of these dioramas no longer show what is considered an accurate portrayal of these cultures, and also because of the problematic nature of exhibiting indigenous cultures in natural history museums (I.e. alongside animals) instead of social history museums. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History removed its Native American Dioramas in 2002 for these reasons.2 

Finally, there are the museums that removed diorama displays to update and modernize the way they told their stories. A remarkable example of this is the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec, near Ottawa, which recently underwent one of the most dramatic museum overhauls of the past twenty years.

Canada Hall 

When it first opened in 1989, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, as it was then known, offered a unique gallery unlike anything that had been seen in a history museum before. The museum’s “Canada Hall” took visitors on a journey through 1,000 years of Canadian history, from the arrival of the Vikings in Newfoundland up to the 1970s. To do so, the hall featured a number of life-sized walk-through dioramas portraying scenes from throughout Canadian history. These included, among other things, the interior of a Basque whaling ship, an eighteenth-century Quebec town square, a Victorian main street in Ontario, a 1930s grain elevator in Saskatchewan, and a 1960s Vancouver Airport lounge. All of these scenes were under a domed ceiling illuminated in the color blue, giving the illusion that one was really outside. Buildings in each scene could be explored, all with furnished rooms and artifact displays integrated into the scenes. 

A representation of an Ontario town main street circa 1885. . .
. . .and a lounge in the Vancouver Airport circa 1960, both in the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s old Canada Hall. Photos by Matthew Farfan

This immersive method of telling Canadian history proved to be very popular with visitors, and by the mid-2000s the Museum of Civilization was the most-visited museum in Canada.3 Immersing visitors wholly in historical environments, it can be argued, was more impactful than cabinet displays of artifacts. Seeing the objects in the context of their use gave them much more meaning. 

Canada Hall was, however not without problems. From the beginning it was criticized by some historians for its focus on settler history and neglect of the First Nations, the indigenous peoples of Canada. The First Nations were covered in a separate gallery of the museum, but their stories from post-Columbian Canada received comparatively little coverage in Canada Hall. In addition, the reconstructions gave prominence to particular provinces in each era, while neglecting what happened in the same era in other provinces. The Maritime Provinces were only covered in the exhibits on early history, whereas the Pacific Coast  only received treatment in the mid-twentieth century exhibits. This presentation also left little space for more detailed accounts of specific stories from Canadian history, such as those of migration, politics, and wars. This was Museum President Mark O’Neill’s chief criticism of the hall when he set out to renovate it in 2013.4 Under his leadership, the Museum of Civilization was renamed the Museum of History and underwent a $25 million overhaul. This remastering of the Canada Hall stripped away all of the immersive displays, replacing them with the modernistic text-and-image panels, touch screens, and glass artifact cases common in contemporary museums. A 1907 Ukrainian settler church from Alberta, the only authentic building in the old hall, was the only structure to be retained in the new Canadian History Hall. 

The new Canadian History Hall. Canadian Museum of History

This new exhibit gallery opened in 2017. It allows for many more aspects of Canadian history to be displayed through visitors through text, videos, and artifacts, and does a much better job at incorporating the experiences of the First Nations. Yet it does not provide nearly as immersive an experience, and stories prominent in the old gallery have become less so in the new one, not without controversy. Canada’s New Democratic Party voiced its anger over the removal of a reconstruction of a union meeting room from the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, probably the most significant event in Canadian labor history.5 This display had a multi-media presentation with recorded voices of strikers playing, making it as if the visitor was among them in the meeting hall in 1919. Artifacts relating to the strike were displayed in cases on both sides of the hall. In contrast, the strike only gets a single panel in the new gallery, easily missable after a series of huge World War I panels and cases. A police badge, armband, and billy club appear to be the only artifacts representing it now. 

The recreation of “Meeting Room No. 10” from the Winnipeg General Strike exhibit in the old Canada Hall. CBC
In the present Canadian Hall of History, the strike is represented only by the green panel on the right. Canadian Museum of History

Something significant was gained, but something significant was lost as well. That is the case with Canada Hall and all other museums that have undergone these kinds of renovations in this century. 

The Textbook Problem 

The original Canada Hall also faced understandable criticism for its alleged “Disneyfication” of history. As is often the case with history education, there is a debate over how much “entertainment” over education should be present within a museum. Dioramas can be seen as dated, hokey displays, with little educational value and serving no purpose other than to terrify young children, and that historical information is best conveyed through reading. 

But how would one make an attractive exhibit design this way. I have noticed from recently developed museums that there is an increased emphasis on reading text. Walls of it cover every exhibit divider. There are some screens playing short films, to add to the experience, and floating artifacts are displayed in otherwise bare display cases to show the visitor “these are the things that were used by these people.” It is a different kind of immersion: an immersion in the information, or in the technical side of the history. One can read about the statistics regarding the usage of an artifact, but cannot actually see how the artifact was used or feel connected to someone who used it. 

With this increased reliance on text and photographs, it becomes difficult to think of one question: why go to a museum at all? With reading and looking at images making up most of the exhibits, how can one distinguish the experience from, say, reading about the subject on an iPad at home? I remember my father saying that the new Pacific War Museum gallery was like “walking through a giant textbook.” This is a fitting description, in that museums are moving towards displays that will convey information effectively, but not attract visitors. Few people have ever been excited about reading a textbook. One might answer that the artifacts would be the draw, but artifacts can speak for themselves only so well. Artifacts that are well-known, like Abraham Lincoln’s hat at the National Museum of American History, will attract visitors with little need for contextualization because most visitors will already know its significance. A regular top hat, though, will not be able to speak in the same way, and visitors will not flock to see it. A description of who wore the hat might help, but even so it will still have little relevance to the museum visitor. One could go onto the museum’s website, search the collections, and read the description for the top hat there. With increasing digitization, there are fewer and fewer reasons for people to leave their homes and pay entrance fees to see such objects. 

As I wrote in my first article of the “Museums in the COVID-19 Crisis” series, museums must give people reasons to come visit by providing unique learning experiences. This will be especially important once the pandemic has passed and people are considering where they want to go out again. A museum that only offers an experience comparable to reading a Wikipedia article might have difficulty attracting visitors again. If dioramas are too dated to do so, a new technology might be able to fill the role. 

Virtual Reality: The New Diorama? 

Virtual reality has exploded in the last decade, become accessible for everyday consumers via new home technologies. An increasing number of video games make use of VR, and some VR programs have already been made by historical organizations. The American Battlefield Trust, for example, made a virtual reality experience of the Battle of Petersburg last year, available to view on YouTube. VR completely immerses a viewer in a time and place with digital recreations, sounds, and actors. It creates an environment more dynamic that what could be provided by a static diorama. 

Detail of the “TimeRide” attraction in Berlin, from the TimeRide Berlin website

It is no surprise, then, that some museums and historical attractions have already made use of this technology. A German firm called TimeRide has recently produced VR tourist attractions in Cologne in Berlin, the former simulating a tram ride through the city in 1910 and the latter simulating a tour bus trip through 1980s East Berlin. The Royal Air Force Museum in London created a VR ride experience simulating the “Dambusters” raid of 1943, with visitors sitting in crew positions of a Lancaster bomber. Most noteworthy however, is the creation of the Migration Museum in Germany. 

The Documentation Center and Museum of Migration in Germany (DOMiD) has been working for years to create a museum dedicated to immigration to Germany. A physical museum building is expected to open this year or next year in Cologne, featuring a massive collection of artifacts relating to immigration in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. To promote the establishment of the museum, the DOMiD developed the “Virtual Migration Museum,” which made its debut in 2018. This “museum,” which can be viewed entirely through home technology, digitally recreated environments experienced my migrant workers in twentieth-century West Germany. These include apartment buildings, a factory floor, and a railway station. Visitors will also be able to view photos of artifacts from the upcoming physical museum.6 In a way, this experience is like a digital successor to the old Canada Hall, recreating social history environments to be explored by visitors. The VR experience, available for Windows, Mac, mobile, and the HTC Vive VR headset, can be downloaded at https://virtuelles-migrationsmuseum.org/en/download-en/. Might this in fact be how we experience museums in the near future? Completely “from home?” 

VR Simulation of a train station in the Virtual Migration Museum. Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek

Conclusion: The Case for Physicality 

I personally would hope not. The new technology is exciting, and has the potential to make a visit to a museum building even better, displayed alongside artifacts. Imagine how easy it will be to alter and update “VR dioramas,” and how little space this technology would take up. That solves all the problems presented by physical dioramas. Even more impressive experiences cold be made with more intricate technologies not available at home. Museums should take note of this as they re-imagine themselves for the future. 

Yet I also hope that physical dioramas do not completely disappear. Even with increasing digitization, they can still pain vivid pictures because of their tangibility, being seen and understood by a visitor without having to look through a headset. I point to the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia as an example. This museum uses detailed tableaus to portray scenes from the Revolutionary War that were not illustrated in the many paintings and sketches of that time. In this manner, the dioramas illuminate scenes not always visible in the popular memory of the war: George Washington breaking up a fistfight between his troops, dejected Continentals retreating from their defeat in New York City, and fourteen-year-old London Pleasants donning a British Army uniform to escape slavery in Virginia.7 These scenes, though static, are brought to life through the detailed life-sized figures that create personability for a visitor, coming face-to face with people from the past.

A diorama depicting George Washington breaking up a brawl at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. MoAR Virtual Tour

As museums continue to evolve, they should make use of the best of old and new exhibit technologies to immerse visitors in history. Screens and text should be balanced with physical displays that create environments to make a comprehensive experience. VR can complement these displays, providing for further immersion and interactivity. With all of these in place, they could bring a young person to understand and respect history the same way a stiff, aging Marine animatronic did for me so many years ago. 

  1. “Dioramen in der Dauerausstellung,” Zoologische Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig, last modified 2019, https://www.zfmk.de/de/museum/dauerausstellungen/dioramen. [↩]
  2. Francie Diep, “The Passing of the Indians Behind Glass,” The Appendix, last modified September 18, 2014, http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/7/the-passing-of-the-indians-behind-glass. [↩]
  3. “Canada’s most visited museum celebrates 150th anniversary,” Canadian Museum of Civilization, last modified May 10, 2006, http://www.civilisations.ca/media/show_pr_e.asp?ID=806. [↩]
  4. “How Stephen Harper is rewriting history,” Maclean’s, last modified July 29, 2013, https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/written-by-the-victors/. [↩]
  5. “Winnipeg General Strike exhibit being dismantled in Ottawa museum,” Winnipeg Free Press, last modified May 25, 2015, https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/Winnipeg-General-Strike-exhibit-being-dismantled-in-Ottawa-museum-304914601.html. [↩]
  6. “About the Museum,” Virtual Migration Museum, last modified 2018, https://virtuelles-migrationsmuseum.org/en/about-the-museum/. [↩]
  7. “12 Surprising Things You’ll Learn at Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution,” Frommer’s, last modified 2017, https://www.frommers.com/slideshows/848166-12-surprising-things-you-ll-learn-at-philadelphia-s-museum-of-the-american-revolution. [↩]

Museums in the COVID-19 Crisis: International Maritime Museum Hamburg

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As summer begins in Germany most establishments have reopened in some capacity, including museums. All are still operating under restrictions, with limits on numbers of visitors and mask requirements being ubiquitous. All museums, municipal and private, are required to adhere to national and local government regulations. This series so far has covered municipal and state-funded museums, but not a privately-run museum. This article will investigate the International Maritime Museum in Hamburg, one of the largest private museums in Germany, and how it is handling COVID-19. 

Exterior of the International Maritime Museum Hamburg
© Michael Zapf

The International Maritime Museum is located in a circa-1879 harbor warehouse in Hamburg’s Speicherstadt (“City of Warehouses”) near the city’s port. The museum’s collection was gathered by Hamburg journalist and maritime enthusiast Peter Tamm, who began collecting after receiving a toy boat from his mother at the age of six in 1934.1 The museum opened in 2008, featuring a collection of around 40,000 model ships (including Tamm’s toy boat) and a plethora of shipping and naval artifacts. The museum has eight floors total, each dedicated to a specific theme of maritime history or technology. The themes range from exploration to merchant shipping to navies, with significant attention to Hamburg area and German maritime history. The lower floors focus on early maritime history and navigation, with exhibits on Classical-era sailing, Early Modern exploration, piracy, and the international slave trade. The middle floors feature exhibits on navies, with several artifacts related to German naval history. One notable display here features an officer’s uniform from every navy in the world. The upper floors display most of the model ship collection, a gallery of maritime art, and space for temporary exhibitions. There is also a highly-detailed hip simulator, with a recreated cargo ship bridge. Groups of visitors can work together to guide the ship into Hamburg’s port, with guidance from experienced sailors who advise the simulation. 

Peter Tamm, the museum’s founder
© Christian O. Bruch
The toy boat that started it all
Photo by Andrey Belenko
An exhibit about cruise ships on the museum’s sixth floor
© vdl

The International Maritime Museum followed similar procedures to public museums in Germany when the coronavirus hit the country, and closed its doors on March 16th, 2020. During the closure period, the staff made routine updates to the museum’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages, keeping guests informed about what was going on. On the Facebook page they had been posting a picture and description of one of their models almost every day since 2016. This task became increasingly important during the pandemic closure. The museum recorded above-average activity on their social media pages, with more likes and comments than ever before. In addition to posts about each of the models in their collection, the page also posted highlights from some of the museum’s other exhibitions, such as navigational instruments and travel ephemera. Additionally, a museum guide livestreamed two tours of the museum in the month of April: one in German and one in English. These tours reportedly had over 45,000 views.2

A screenshot of the museum’s Facebook page

The museum reopened on May 7th, with limitations in place. Guided tours are not taking place, and the ship simulator is closed. However, these are slated to start again on July 1st. Visitors are required to maintain social distancing and wear masks while inside the museum, and to wash their hands thoroughly. These procedures are the same as what has been seen at other museums featured in this series. Peter Tamm spoke of the museum’s reopening: 

“As a private museum, the closure ordered by the authorities hit us particularly hard. The past few weeks have been difficult, but our museum has a new look when it reopens. We have carried out cosmetic repairs and cleaning work and hopefully many enthusiastic visitors will find new exhibits on many decks. “3

Despite the difficulties presented by closure for a private museum. The Maritime Museum took the opportunity refurbish its displays and add new additions to its galleries. A new temporary exhibition, titled “Johannes Holst – Painter of the Sea” opened with the museum’s reopening. This gallery features detailed ship paintings from early twentieth-century German marine artist Johannes Holst, previously held in private collections and not accessible to the public. The exhibition runs until July 19th.4

The International Maritime Museum weathered the worst part of the COVID-19 crisis doing much of the same things its municipal counterparts did. It engaged an audience through social media, inviting them to experience the museum from home. In doing they attracted attention from a greater number of viewers than they had encountered before, potentially attracting many new visitors for the post-lockdown months to follow. 

  1. Matthias Gretzschel and Michael Zapf, Am Anfang war das Schiff – Das Internationale Maritime Museum in Hamburg – Sein Stifter und Gründer Peter Tamm (Hamburg: 2012), 10. [↩]
  2. “Die Wiedereröffnung am 7. Mai,” Internationales Maritimes Museum Hamburg, last modified May 5, 2020, https://www.imm-hamburg.de/2020/05/die-wiedereroeffnung-am-7-mai/. [↩]
  3. Museum, “Die Wiedereröffnung.” [↩]
  4. “Sonderaustellung,” Internationales Maritimes Musem Hamburg, last modified June 13, 2020, https://www.imm-hamburg.de/museum/sonderausstellung/. [↩]

Museums in the COVID-19 Crisis: Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig

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On April 30, 2020, the German government began to lift some of the lockdown restrictions put in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic as the number of new infections per day in the country decreased. Museums, along with public parks and churches, have been allowed to reopen, as long as they follow federal social distancing guidelines.1 German museums will now be able to draw in visitors once again, but the visiting experience will be very different from what it was before. The opening procedure of the Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig, with social distancing guidelines in place, provides a demonstration of how life will continue in Germany amid the pandemic.

The Stadtgeschichtliches Museum’s main exhibition building: the Old Town Hall in Leipzig
Photo by Thomas Biggs

The Stadtgeschichtliches Museum is the municipal museum of the city of Leipzig. It consists of eight exhibition buildings spread out around the city, each containing galleries pertaining to a topic of local history or culture. The museum’s main building at the sixteenth-century Old Town Hall contains a permanent exhibit of the city of Leipzig’s cultural history from the Middle Ages to the present. The nearby Haus Böttchergäßchen, a modern building, features space for rotating exhibitions about further topics of city art and culture. This building also houses an interactive children’s museum aimed at museumgoers ten and under. FORUM 1813, located next to the city’s famous Battle of the Nations monument, is a small museum dedicated to the Napoleonic Wars and the decisive Battle of Leipzig of 1813 that saw the defeat of Napoleon in the German states. The Schillerhaus, located north of the city center, features an exhibit in a farmhouse where poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller spent a summer in 1785. The Museum Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum holds an exhibition about coffee in Germany inside the oldest coffee house in the country, which opened in 1711. The Sportmuseum, next to the Red Bull Arena, covers regional athletic history and contains one of the largest sports-related collections in all of Germany. Finally, the Alte Börse, Leipzig’s seventeenth century customs house near the Old Town Hall, hosts lectures, readings, and other events put on by the museum organization.2

An exhibit about the 1989 Monday Demonstrations in the Old Town Hall.
Source: Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig website

 

A view inside the Museum Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum
Source: Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig website

Like other museums in Germany, the Stadtgeschichtliches Musuem closed all of its facilities to the public in March 2020. On May 7, due to the lifting of restrictions, most of the museum’s facilities have reopened. Only the Children’s Museum and the libraries in the Haus Böttchergäßchen remain closed. Because the pandemic has not fully passed, special regulations in line with government recommendations are in place for museum visitors. All exhibition spaces will limit the number of visitors allowed inside at the same time. Visitors must remain six feet (two meters) apart from museum staff and each other, and must wear adequate mouth-nose coverings. The museum is encouraging visitors to use electronic payment for admissions rather than cash, and is engaging in regular disinfecting and cleaning of the facilities. No screening is required to enter, but hand sanitizer is offered for all visitors at entrance areas. All visitors are also asked to respect hygiene measures by regularly washing their hands, coughing into their arm, and keeping their hands away from their faces. 

Because of the almost two-month closure, the Stadtgeschichtliches Musuem postponed all of its upcoming special exhibitions and extended the duration of the exhibitions on display at the time of the closure. During the closure period, it also started a new online exhibit. Titled Hoffnungszeichen, (“Signs of Hope”), the exhibit features images and descriptions of artifacts from the museum’s collection that provided hope for city residents in past years. The first artifact exhibited was a communion chalice from 1632, a year when Leipzig suffered from a plague epidemic amid the Thirty Years’ War. The purpose of the exhibit, according to Musuem Director Dr. Anselm Hartinger, is to show that this generation of Leipzigers “are by no means the first generation to be confronted with general societal challenges, pandemics, wars and upheavals in Leipzig, [who] learned to live with them and ultimately found a strengthened new beginning.”3 The exhibit also allows visitors to submit their own stories, photographs, and comments relating to their experience with the COVID-19 pandemic in Leipzig. On May 7, the museum opened a corresponding physical exhibition in the Haus Böttchergäßchen, featuring the objects the museum showed online and a selection of the digital submissions from visitors. 

The Hoffnungszeichen exhibition in the Haus Böttchergäßchen
Source: Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig website

 

An art installation featuring toilet paper, on display in the Hoffnungszeichen exhibition
Source: Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig website

By following federal guidelines and encouraging visitors to do the same, the Stadtgeschichtliches Musuem has managed successfully reopen as the pandemic continues. In doing so it provides a model for how museums elsewhere can reopen, though time will tell if these measures will effectively prevent the virus from spreading more in lieu of a full lockdown. The new exhibition demonstrates this museum’s recognition of COVID-19 as an important historical event that will be studied extensively in the future, and an intention to contribute to its documentation within its community. 

  1. Nasr, Joseph. “Germany eases lockdown but Merkel warns of new outbreak risk.” Reuters, April 30, 2020. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-merkel/germany-eases-lockdown-but-merkel-warns-of-new-outbreak-risk-idUSKBN22C2WO. [↩]
  2. “Unsere Häuser.” Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig. Accessed May 15, 2020. https://www.stadtgeschichtliches-museum-leipzig.de/besuch/unsere-haeuser/. [↩]
  3. “Stadtgeschichtliches Museum setzt digitale Hoffnungszeichen.” leipzig.de. Stadt Leipzig, March 24, 2020. https://www.leipzig.de/news/news/stadtgeschichtliches-museum-setzt-digitale-hoffnungszeichen/ [↩]

Museums in the COVID-19 Crisis: German-Russian Museum

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As the anniversary of V-E Day arrives, another museum in Berlin finds itself changing the way it observes. The German-Russian Museum is the center of May 8th commemorations in Berlin. In 2020, this historic museum is taking action to ensure that its commemoration is accessible even from the home.

The German-Russian Museum is housed in a circa-1936 building in Berlin-Karlshorst. The building began its life as the mess hall of a Wehrmacht military engineer school, but became known internationally on May 8, 1945 as the place of Nazi Germany’s surrender at the end of the Second World War. In a ceremony held in the school’s central hall, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht signed the German Instruments of Surrender. The document officializing the capitulation was accepted and signed by Soviet Marshal Georgi Zhukov and British Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, with Generals Carl Spaatz of the United States and Jean de Lattre de Tassigny of France signing as witnesses. The building subsequently served as the headquarters of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, and in the 1960s became the “Museum of Unconditional Surrender of Fascist Germany in the Great Patriotic War.” The museum was organized and operated by the Soviet military and presented the history of the German-Soviet war. In the late 1990s, the museum was redone in a collaboration between German, Russian, and Ukranian historians to chronicle German-Soviet relations between the Russian Revolution and the end of the Cold War while retaining a focus on World War II. It underwent a second revision in 2013, with upgrades to the permanent displays. The museum’s centerpiece is a recreation of the “Capitulation Hall” where the surrender ceremony took place, made to appear as it did in 1945. In addition to the main gallery, there are also exhibits about the building’s history, including the preserved offices of the Soviet military administration. Some exhibits from the museum’s Soviet era have also been preserved, displaying how the history was presented during the Cold War era. Outside on the museum grounds there is an extensive collection of Soviet armor and artillery, as well as monuments erected by the Soviets. 

The mess hall of the Heerespionierschule as it appeared in 1945
© Foto Timofej Melnik, Museum Berlin-Karlshorst

 

The museum building today, with the flags of Germany, Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine flown out front
© Photo Thomas Bruns, Museum Berlin-Karlshorst

 

The central hall of the museum building, where the surrender ceremony took place
Photo by Thomas Biggs

 

One of the monuments outside the museum, featuring a Soviet T-34 tank, as it appeared on May 8, 2018. Wreaths and flowers have been laid on the pedestal.
Photo by Thomas Biggs

The German-Russian Museum usually hosts a large commemoration event every May 8th. Dignitaries from Russia visit the museum, and there is a concert and a serving of Russian food and drinks. A wreath-laying ceremony takes place at the monuments outside. The museum planned for an expanded ceremony this year to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe, including the opening of a new exhibition, a visit from German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and visits from representatives of all the former Allied powers, to take place over several days. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions, all of these events had to be canceled. However, due to the German government lifting some of the restrictions on May 4th, the German-Russian Museum will be able to hold a reduced ceremony. The Capitulation Hall will be open to visitors between 10:00 am and 8:00 pm on May 8th through 10th. The exhibit galleries will remain closed. Outside there will be an outdoor exhibition about the surrender, similar to the larger one that was supposed to take place on Pariser Platz. Berlin Mayor Michael Müller will visit the museum on May 8th, and there will be a smaller wreath-laying ceremony later that day. 

The museum is also taking measures to make sure visitors can view its content from home. Most notable is their handling of the new exhibition that was to debut for the anniversary. Titled “From Casablanca to Karlshorst,” the exhibition traces the progress of the Second World War from the 1943 Casablanca Conference, where the Allied powers determined that an “unconditional surrender” from Germany would be the only acceptable means of concluding the war, to Germany’s unconditional surrender at Berlin-Karlshorst in 1945. The exhibit follows two themes: the efforts of the Allies to defeat Nazi Germany and the escalation of violence in Europe by the Nazis that led up to the end of the war. Notable artifacts on display were to be a Russian-Orthodox liturgical book, recovered from a village in Belarus destroyed by German occupiers, and a tree trunk from the site of the Below Forest temporary camp with the names of Soviet POWs carved into it.  The museum has created a virtual tour of the exhibition, accessible at https://tour.art.vision/deutsch-russisches-museum-de-en-fr.html. Using software similar to Google Maps Street view, visitors can go through the entire exhibition. All of the exhibit text, presented in German, Russian, and English, is clear and readable. The Capitulation Hall and Marshal Zhukov’s office are also accessible in the virtual tour. 

A view inside the “From Casablanca to Karlshorst” exhibition
© Photo: Harry Schnitger, Museum-Berlin-Karlshorst

The museum also has a page on their website dedicated the 75th anniversary at https://www.museum-karlshorst.de/index.php?id=146&L=1. This page features selected photographs from the museum’s archives related to the surrender, more information and highlighted artifacts from the new exhibition, and pictures and testimonies sent by present-day children from Germany, the former Soviet Union, and the former Western Allies as answers to the question “What does World War II mean for you?” Visitors to the page can submit their own answer to that question via the email address erinnerung@museum-karlshorst.de. They can also partake in an online poll asking the same question, with the options of “Victory,” “Defeat,” “Liberation,” “New Beginning,” and “Meaningless” for answers. The content is all available in German, Russian, and English, with the photograph pages also available in French and Polish. 

Screenshot of the “Voices from children and teenagers” page

Though a large-scale on-site commemoration of the 75th anniversary of V-E Day is not possible this year, the German-Russian Museum has made sure that the occasion will still be observed, and has made their contributions accessible to a worldwide audience through its online platform. 

Museums in the COVID-19 Crisis: Allied Museum Berlin

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Editorial note: Thomas Biggs is an intern at the German Historical Institute Washington DC. He is a graduate of the George Washington University (2019) with a BA in International Affairs and minors in History and German Studies. He studied in Berlin for his junior year spring semester with the IES Abroad Language and Area Studies Program in collaboration with the Humboldt University of Berlin. During this semester he visited the Allied Museum Berlin as part of his coursework. His areas of study included security policy, US and German history, and the development of German democracy between 1815 and the present.

Every museum’s intention is to attract visitors: A museum wants people to experience the stories and objects it has on display, with the hope that they learn something new or understand something greater. Unique exhibitions and significant artifacts are what convince people to visit a specific museum location. The experience of being in the physical location, being able to see images or objects, hear, sounds, and sometimes even smell smells associated with a particular idea or period, is what drives people to visit a museum location. Information today is more accessible than ever, be it in books, on television, or on the internet. Yet people still visit museums, and million-dollar museum projects keep opening, because there is something so unique about the museum experience that cannot be conveyed through any other medium. It is a full immersion in a topic, in a time, and in a place. The COVID-19 crisis has presented a great problem for museums, as stay-at-home orders have made it impossible for them to perform this necessary function of attracting and educating visitors at their specialized locations. To stay in touch with their visitors and present their collections without opening museum buildings, museums have turned to the internet. New technology has allowed for innovative ways to bring a museum to one’s home.

The Allied Museum in Berlin is one such institution facing the issues brought on by COVID-19. The museum presents the history of the three Western Allied powers’ (Great Britain, France, and the United States) military presence in West Berlin and West Germany during the Cold War. It interprets the daily lives and missions of the Allied troops, as well as the impact their presence had on Germany. The museum’s collections hold scores of related artifacts and documents. Its physical location at Clayallee 135, in the former American Sector, is intricately tied to the history it presents. The museum makes use of two former American base buildings, the Outpost Theater and the Nicholson Memorial Library, to house its galleries. In between the two buildings is a plaza displaying the museum’s large artifacts. The most popular of these is the British Handley Page Hastings cargo aircraft, a participant in the Berlin Airlift. On Sundays between April and October, visitors can pay one Euro to climb inside the aircraft, take a look into the cockpit, and view a short film about the airlift. The aircraft is effective at drawing families to the museum on Sundays and is one source of much-appreciated donations for the otherwise state-funded museum.

The museum’s lot with the Handley Page Hastings as its centerpiece. The Nicholson Memorial Library is in the background. Photo by Thomas Biggs

Since the Allied Museum closed on March 14, visitors cannot experience it in any of these ways. All of the museum’s planned events for the foreseeable future have been cancelled. The museum’s website, alliiertenmuseum.de, has a posted notice about the indefinite closure. Otherwise the website remains largely as it did before march, featuring summaries of the exhibit galleries and an entry about highlighted objects. The “Collections” section offers descriptions of the museum’s collection areas and articles about three “highlighted” artifacts selected on a rotating basis. Historical information and statistics about the Berlin Airlift and denazification are also featured. The museum’s events list has been updated to announce the cancellations.

Fortunately, the Allied Museum is still working to stay in contact with interested patrons, and is making use of new ways to engage the public while they are sheltering in place. The museum has launched a new YouTube channel (titled “Alliiertenmuseum”) featuring German-language video tours. The channel currently has four videos, all posted within the last month. Three of them highlight “favorite objects” on display in the museum galleries, with a visitor guide telling in-depth stories about each. The fourth video features a “behind-the-scenes” look at the museum’s archival facilities, showing how artifacts and documents are catalogued. The museum plans to upload more videos in the coming weeks. The museum’s Facebook page is similarly engaging audiences by posting historical images and photographs of more of the museum’s artifacts, all accompanied by German and English descriptions. The museum will post all further information about museum activities during the pandemic to this page.

The Allied Museum’s Facebook page

May 8, 2020 will mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe (V-E Day), and the Allied Museum had plans to observe the occasion. There was to be an open-air exhibition by the Brandenburg Gate about the end of the war, featuring contributions from the Allied Museum and other Berlin museums that document this period in history. Sadly, this exhibition had to be canceled as well. Allied Museum Director Jürgen Lillteicher states that the majority of the exhibition will now be shown online instead. Dr. Lillteicher hopes that interviews recorded for the exhibition will be made available online as well. Information about this project can be found at kulturprojekte.berlin/projekt/75-jahre-kriegsende/ and on the Facebook page “75 Jahre Kriegsende.”

The museum had additionally planned a film series to be shown at the museum, featuring works of cinema about events between D-Day and V-E Day. Instead, posts about the planned featured films are being added to the Facebook page, so individuals can watch them at home. The museum also intended to host events covering the liberation of Nazi concentration camps by the Allied forces. Posts about this topic are being made for the Facebook page as well, with the most recent one featuring the liberation of Sachsenhausen by the Soviets on April 22, 1945.

The Allied Museum has found ways to engage potential visitors even though no one can visit the museum site itself. Its solutions, utilizing familiar social media platforms, are simple yet effective. People wanting to learn about the postwar period or what the museum itself has to offer can do so by utilizing these platforms, even after the pandemic has passed.