The Bode Museum in Berlin's Mitte district is part of the building
ensemble of the Museum Island and is therefore a UNESCO World Heritage
Site. Built by Ernst von Ihne in neo-baroque style as the Kaiser
Friedrich Museum between 1898 and 1904 on behalf of Kaiser Wilhelm II,
it houses the sculpture collection and the Museum of Byzantine Art as
well as the coin cabinet. On the forecourt was the equestrian statue of
Frederick III created by Rudolf Maison, which was destroyed in the GDR
era.
In 2019, the Bode Museum had around 260,000 visitors.
As early as the 1840s, the idea of building an art museum on this site arose in Berlin. The art historian Wilhelm von Bode provided the suggestions that were later implemented; Bode was knighted for this in 1914. Court architect Ernst von Ihne and site manager Max Hasak erected the museum building between 1897 and 1904 for Bode's collection of sculptures and paintings, the original inventory of which goes back to the Kunstkammer of the Electors of Brandenburg. The museum was opened on October 18, 1904, the birthday of Frederick III, who died in 1888. In memory of the "99-day emperor" Friedrich III. the house was given the name Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum.
During the Second World War, the building suffered the least amount of damage on the Museum Island, but it was not until 1951 that it was given an emergency roof. After the end of the war in 1945, the new Berlin city administration had all references to previous rulers erased; the collection building was now unofficially called the Museum am Kupfergraben. On March 1, 1956, Johannes R. Becher, the GDR Minister of Culture at the time, solemnly named the Kaiser Friedrich Museum the Bode Museum in memory of its builder. The Egyptian Museum with its papyrus collection, the Museum of Prehistory and Early History, a picture gallery, a sculpture collection and the coin cabinet were temporarily housed here. The first parts of the collections could be shown again from 1954. The gradual repair of the building, including the restoration of the interior, went on until the 750th anniversary of the city in 1987 while the museum was still running.
In the early
1990s, numerous serious defects were identified, so that a general
overhaul (“Chancellor overhaul”) was decided in 1997/1998. It included
the monument-appropriate restoration of the entire 100-year-old museum
building, with numerous structural and decorative elements that had been
restored since the end of the war also having to be professionally
renewed.
A special attraction was the Tiepolo cabinet as early as
1904, a relatively small room in antique pink and white with rich stucco
decorations in the form of late Baroque bandelwerk. Here you can see 22
frescoes in grisaille technique created by the Baroque painter Giovanni
Battista Tiepolo in 1759 for the Palazzo Volpato Panigai in Nervesa in
northern Italy. Wilhelm von Bode bought them, brought them to Berlin in
1899 and had them installed in his museum. During World War II the room
was completely destroyed; the images had previously been outsourced and
were long considered lost. During the last general overhaul of the
building, the cabinet could be restored at great expense - based on a
single black-and-white photo from a museum catalog from 1904.
Four of the five courtyards are open to visitors with outdoor sculpture
exhibitions. A connection to the Pergamon Museum was established in line
with the master plan for the Museum Island. Part of the repair was the
modernization of the entire building in terms of technology and
security. The photo studio and restoration workshops were fitted out in
a contemporary way, corroded parts of the steel girder construction were
replaced, disabled access was created, dry rot was eliminated, the fire
protection system was modernized and air conditioning was installed. The
original substance was to be preserved as far as possible, so subsequent
installations were removed and the original color versions restored.
The general renovation of the Bode Museum cost 152 million euros and
was financed from funds from the federal budget. The museum has floor
areas totaling 25,000 m²; the main usable area is 11,000 m² for the 66
exhibition rooms. A study collection with Italian sculptures from
various schools, a children's gallery, a museum shop and a cafeteria in
the entrance hall complement what is on offer to visitors.
With
the symbolic key handover in November 2005, the complete renovation of
the Bode Museum ended after five and a half years. In October 2006, the
fully furnished museum reopened to visitors. In the meantime, the
current presentation of the works of art and the interior design, which
had been discussed controversially in some cases, was being prepared.
The result reflects contemporary viewing habits of museum visitors:
Walls and plinths are mostly painted white or light gray, the art
objects are arranged loosely, sometimes with special visual references,
sculptures are often freestanding in the room, the impression is open
and lively. In doing so, however, Bode's original concept of the complex
style rooms is clearly quoted: Historical furnishing details - floors,
ceilings, individual pieces of furniture - enrich many of the exhibition
rooms; In addition, there are 150 selected panel paintings from the
picture gallery, which provide stimulating additions to the exhibits in
terms of motif or depiction (or both).
Already at the reopening
it became clear that the exhibition rooms of the Bode-Museum would not
be sufficient for all parts of the collection in the long term. In
particular, the State Museums in Berlin, under their General Director
Michael Eissenhauer and the President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage
Foundation, Hermann Parzinger, are planning to completely relocate the
picture gallery previously in the Kulturforum here and to reunite it
with the holdings of the Sculpture Collection in one building. This
requires an extension that is functionally and substantively linked to
the Bode Museum and complements it. The area to the west of the
Kupfergraben is intended for this new building. In 2009, ten students
from the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences, Department of
Architecture, developed drafts for a new building under Professors Theo
Brenner and Dominik Krohm. For its realization, the barracks from the
1960s, in which Friedrich Engels' guard regiment was stationed, would
have to be demolished. Between April and September 2010, the visionary
designs were on display in the museum's foyer. Although neither dates
nor financing options have been set, the foundation president announced
optimistically: "I am sure that we will be able to convince politicians
and the public."
In the summer months of 2007-2015, open-air
Sunday concerts were held regularly in front of the entrance portal of
the Bode Museum.
The Neo-Baroque building stands on the north-western tip
of Museum Island, on an irregularly triangular plot of 6000 m². The
Berliner Mehlhaus was located here from 1824 to 1897 and, since 1876,
the art barracks, in which exhibitions of contemporary Berlin artists
had taken place. A 39.50 m high dome made of wood and steel rises above
the main structure of the building. Building experts call it the
Schwedler dome after its inventor, Johann Wilhelm Schwedler. After the
museum was rebuilt in the 1950s, it was covered with slate. As part of
the complete renovation around 2002, the cupola roof was given back its
original copper standing seam covering.
Despite the irregular
shape of the site, the architect of the museum building managed to
convey the impression of a completely symmetrical, isosceles building,
aligned with the semi-circular entrance wing topped by a dome, to which
bridges lead over the two arms of the Spree. The building is clad with
Rackwitzer, Alt-Warthauer, Wunschelburger and Friedersdorfer sandstone
(all originated in the Cretaceous period) from Silesia. A cuboid base
with windows and two further floors divided by Corinthian half-columns
and gabled risalite seem to rise directly from the Spree. Allegories of
the arts and famous art cities crown the attic, created by the sculptors
August Vogel and Wilhelm Widemann.
At the
opening of the new museum, a scaled-down model of Schlueter's equestrian
statue of the Great Elector was initially set up in the large vestibule.
In 1902 an order was placed to produce a 1:1 plaster model of the
equestrian figure on the Long Bridge (later the Town Hall Bridge). As
was corrected almost a week later, the copy made with the help of the
plaster cast (including other personalities honored with monuments that
the Kaiser gave away) is to be handed over to the New German Museum in
Boston. On the other hand, a bronze cast is to be made for the large
hall of the Berlin Museum. However, this model was apparently metalized
in the Galvanoplastic Art Institute in Geislingen to save material and
money and is still in the hall.
In 1904, the approximately 6.80
meter high equestrian statue of Friedrich III was erected on the
forecourt accessible via the Monbijou Bridge. set up. The bronze
sculpture came from the sculptor Rudolf Maison; the granite base with
the dedication "King Friedrich III. of Prussia German Emperor the German
Empire” by the architect Ernst von Ihne. When presenting the model,
Wilhelm II is said to have said that such a figure had "not been modeled
since the Colleoni". In 1951 the sculpture was melted down for
ideological reasons and the base was later removed. A model of this
equestrian statue is in the depot of the Historical Museum in
Regensburg.
The equestrian statue of Friedrich III. on the
forecourt and the equestrian statue of the Great Elector in the
vestibule of the museum were related in that they rode towards each
other: The Great Elector met his imperial descendant Frederick III, and
his master builder Ernst von Ihne met his artistic ancestor Andreas
Schlueter.
The alignment of several transverse buildings created five inner
courtyards. Behind the foyer, an impressive sequence of rooms begins
with the central axis of the house: first the large domed hall with a
sweeping staircase and the galvanoplastic copy of Andreas Schlueter's
equestrian statue of the Great Elector (made in 1904 by the WMF) in the
center. This is followed by the Kamecke Hall with the figures that once
stood on the roof of the Villa Kamecke on Dorotheenstrasse, which
Schlueter built and later destroyed. Next is the Italian
Renaissance-style basilica, with religious imagery in the side chapels
such as the colored glazed terracottas by Luca della Robbia and the
Florentine Resurrection Altar. The conclusion is the small domed hall in
rococo style with a staircase. At its foot are the two statues of Venus
and Mercury by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, which originally formed the start
of the Sanssouci vineyard staircase. On the upper floor of the rotunda
are the marble statues of the six generals of Frederick the Great from
Berlin's Wilhelmplatz, which were replaced by bronze copies at their
original location in the 19th century. In this row of representative
rooms, celebrations were once held to which court society and wealthy
bourgeois patrons were invited.
In the actual exhibition rooms,
Bode had put together dense, coherent ensembles of sculptures,
paintings, furniture and applied art objects, as was previously the case
in upper-class private collections. In doing so, he took into account
the most important collectors of the first collection, the banker Adolph
Thiem and James Simon, who sold their exhibits at symbolic prices but
insisted that they be grouped according to their former owners rather
than thematically.
There were also interior design details such
as portals, marble floors, coffered ceilings, chimneys and altars, which
Bode bought mainly in Italy for his new museum building. With these
rooms he wanted to convey the atmosphere of bygone eras to the visitors.
With the period rooms, he pursued a museum-pedagogical concept that
Ludwig Hoffmann also used as a basis for the new building of the
Märkisches Museum – not far away up the Spree, at almost the same time
and with even greater consistency, namely also in the external
appearance of his building.
In the last years of the Second
World War, when bombs were dropped on Berlin, museum employees and many
helpers outsourced larger parts of the collections, including to the
Friedrichshain anti-aircraft bunker, which had been classified as a
security depot. But in May 1945, when the war was already officially
over, a fire broke out in the bunker rooms, which lasted for three days
and developed great heat. As a result, many exhibits were destroyed,
others mangled beyond recognition (artificial corpses). What still
looked like a valuable exhibit was brought directly to Russia by the
Soviet occupying forces as compensation and kept in the Hermitage in
Leningrad and in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. In 1958, numerous of the
stolen works of art were returned to the GDR in a symbolic act of
friendship and stored in museum depots. There they remained unnoticed
for many years.
Only in the 2010s, when the structural renovation
of the Bode Museum and the redesign of the exhibitions were completed,
sponsors were found for the restoration of valuable collection items; an
important patron is the Siemens Foundation. The museum's restoration
workshop is now scientifically engaged in the reconstruction of 59
selected works. A striking example is the marble shield bearer sculpture
by Tullio Lombardo (created around 1495). In April 2018 there was a
small exhibition on the Art in Stock initiative. In 2016, 59 statues
from the Bode Museum were rediscovered in Moscow's Pushkin Museum.
The sculpture
collection presents one of the most comprehensive collections of older
sculpture in Germany. Like the holdings of the Museum of Byzantine Art,
it has been housed separately in different buildings in East and West
since the Second World War and has been exhibited again in its original
location in the Bode Museum for the first time since 2006. A
particularly striking example of this combination is the triumphal cross
group from the Moritzkirche in Naumburg, which can be seen in the
basement of the museum. The two oak figures from around 1220 had spent
the last decades in different places, the Maria in Berlin-Dahlem, the
Christ on the Museum Island.
The collection includes works from
the Middle Ages to the late 18th century from German-speaking countries
as well as from France, Holland, Italy and Spain. The focus of the
collection is Italy, especially the Italian early Renaissance:
terracottas by Luca della Robbia, sculptures by Donatello, Desiderio da
Settignano, Francesco Laurana and Mino da Fiesole are among the
highlights of the collection. The German sculptors of the late Gothic
period are also strongly represented, including Tilman Riemenschneider,
Hans Brüggemann, Niclaus Gerhaert von Leyden and Hans Leinberger.
Particularly noteworthy are the large-format knights' saints from the
time of the Thirty Years' War and the alabaster and ivory statuettes
from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Ignaz Günther, Joseph Anton
Feuchtmayer, Edmé Bouchardon, Pierre Puget, Jean-Antoine Houdon and
others represent Rococo and early Classicism sculpture.
This collection contains works of art and everyday objects from the Western Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire from the 3rd to the 15th centuries. According to the areas in which these empires spread, objects can be found from almost the entire ancient Mediterranean region: from Italy and Turkey, from the Balkans and Greece, from North Africa, the Middle East and Russia. Four focal points determine the special profile of the museum: late antique sarcophagi from Rome, the capital of the Western Roman Empire, figurative and ornamental sculptures from the Eastern Roman Empire, ivory carvings and icons in mosaic technique as examples of Byzantine court art, and finally objects for everyday use and for practicing the Christian religion from Egypt.
This is one of the oldest special collections of the Prussian Cultural
Heritage Foundation. Its beginnings go back to the Kunstkammer of
Brandenburg electors in the late 16th century. In 1868 the cabinet was
given the status of its own museum and in 1904 was given specially
furnished rooms in the basement of the museum.
The coin cabinet
is one of the world's largest numismatic collections. Their validity is
essentially based on closed series of coins from the beginning of
coinage in the seventh century BC in Asia Minor to the present. Only a
small part of the more than 500,000 objects can be shown in the
permanent exhibitions. 1,500 top specimens of ancient coins are
presented in the Pergamon Museum. In the Bode Museum, 4,000 coins and
medals can be seen in four exhibition rooms on the second floor. The
pieces on display are described in an interactive coin catalogue. All
other objects can be viewed in the basement by appointment. The special
numismatic library can also be used there.
In the night of March 27, 2017, a Big Maple Leaf gold coin weighing
around 100 kg was stolen from the exhibition of the Berlin Coin Cabinet;
it was on loan from a private owner. Their face value was one million
Canadian dollars, the material value at the time of the crime was around
3.8 million euros. Four suspects were arrested in July 2017, two of whom
were still in custody in November 2017. Gold attachments to the coin
were seized in a vehicle confiscated for other reasons, but the coin
itself was not found. In 2018, the public was told that the thieves
could not be caught and that the coin was most likely melted down. In
mid-July 2018, the Berlin public prosecutor's office and the Berlin
State Criminal Police Office confiscated 77 properties with a total
value of ten million euros from members of the extended Remmo family, to
which the suspects are attributed. In the event of contradictions, the
district court of Berlin has to decide on the final whereabouts of the
property in question.
On February 20, 2020, Wissam and Ahmed
Remmo were found guilty of coin theft by the Berlin Regional Court and
each sentenced to four and a half years in prison. Former security guard
Denis W., who went to school with Ahmed Remmo and is a friend of his,
was sentenced to three years and four months in prison. The judgments
became final in the same year. However, Ahmed Remmo appealed and thus
remained at large. The submitted appeal was dismissed by the Federal
Court of Justice in July 2021. In August 2021, Ahmed Remmo was arrested
and charged a month later in connection with the Dresden jewel theft.
In the case of the Big Maple Leaf theft, traces of gold and gold
filings in the perpetrators' apartments, vehicles and clothing were
important clues. The court also ordered the confiscation of a total of
3.4 million euros from the convicts. Participation in the crime Wayci
Remmos could not be proven; the court assumes that there are at least
two other perpetrators.
Pearl Swap - Knowledge, Worlds, Values. (January 21 – May 3,
2020)
Incomparable: Art from Africa in the Bode Museum (October
27, 2017 – November 24, 2019)
Two Camels and a Saint – The
Ancient Pilgrimage Center of Abu Mina in Egypt (February 13, 2018 –
January 31, 2019)
150 years of the coin cabinet – coins, medals,
people (November 23, 2018 – October 27, 2019)
Images of people -
ways to the portrait from antiquity to the present (November 24,
2017 - October 7, 2018)
science and turbulence. Wolfgang Fritz
Volbach, a scientist between the two world wars (October 13, 2017 –
January 28, 2018)
Syria antiqua – Coins and Monuments on Museum
Island (June 16 – November 5, 2017)
Art shapes money: Muse makes
money (November 24, 2016 – May 27, 2017)
Canova and the Dance
(October 21, 2016 – January 22, 2017)
Holbein in Berlin – The
Madonna of the Würth Collection with masterpieces from the Berlin
State Museums (January 21 – July 17, 2016)
One God - Abraham's
heirs on the Nile. Jews, Christians, Muslims in Egypt from Antiquity
to the Middle Ages (December 1, 2015 – December 31, 2016)
Nothing
new. The abstraction has not yet begun. Markus Lüpertz in the Bode
Museum (November 6, 2015 – March 20, 2016)
Thrace 3.0. Coinage in
the Land of Orpheus (October 16, 2015 – October 15, 2016)
The
expressive in art. The Crucifixion of the Master of Meßkirch from
the Würth Collection in the Bode Museum (July 23, 2015 – January 3,
2016)
collector's luck. Masterpieces from the Marks-Thomée
Collection (July 17, 2015 – November 15, 2015)
The Missing
Museum. The Berlin sculpture and painting collections 70 years after
the end of the war (March 19, 2015 – September 27, 2015)
Mark
Alexander. Red and White Mannheim (October 29, 2014 – February 15,
2015)
Theodor Wiegand and Byzantine Art (October 17, 2014 –
January 18, 2015)
I gave gold for iron. The First World War in
the Medium of Medals (March 21, 2014 – August 30, 2015)