The Mauermuseum – Museum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie is a private museum near the former Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, which focuses on the Berlin Wall. The museum, founded by Rainer Hildebrandt, has been on Friedrichstrasse in Kreuzberg since October 19, 1963. The director of the museum is Alexandra Hildebrandt.
After the Wall was built and Checkpoint Charlie was set up in August
1961, Rainer Hildebrandt set up the 13 August working group, which
helped people flee East Germany and offered East German opposition
members a contact point. From October 19, 1962, the working group under
Hildebrandt showed the exhibition "It Happened at the Wall" in a
three-room apartment on Bernauer Strasse, which was later named the
opening date of the museum. A few months later, on June 14, 1963,
Hildebrandt opened the museum called "Haus am Checkpoint Charlie" in the
former premises of Café Kölln at today's location. The August 13 working
group continued its political work in the museum: through a small window
in the old building from the 19th century, escape helpers could observe
all movements at the border crossing and refugees were helped on the
spot in the house.
Since Checkpoint Charlie was the main border
crossing to East Berlin for foreign travelers, the checkpoint and with
it the museum quickly gained international fame. According to Sybille
Frank, in its early days the Wall Museum was as famous as it was
notorious for its “chaotic hodgepodge of everyday objects, relics of all
kinds, “hands-on” escape objects and artistic works of controversial
quality.” Nevertheless, it quickly became one of the most visited
Museums of West Berlin. Between 1985 and 1986, as part of the IBA in
1987, the American architect Peter Eisenman built the adjoining building
in the deconstructivist style, which is used by the Wall Museum.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Checkpoint Charlie and the
East Berlin border system were shut down. The contract for use of the
Wall Museum was to be terminated by the district office in 1992 as part
of the redevelopment of the resulting wasteland, but the investment
company Central European Development Corporation went bankrupt in 2003,
so that only three of the five planned buildings could be built.
Instead, in 1996 the Wall Museum presented a design for an open-air
museum in the inner courtyard of the new building, which was not
implemented. Despite the consistently high number of visitors, most of
the subsidies were canceled after reunification, which put the museum in
financial difficulties. One of the reasons for the cuts was internal
financial disputes. In 2000, the Wall Museum donated a replica of the
American control barracks that had been dismantled in 1990 and taken to
the Allied Museum to be displayed at the historic site along with a copy
of a "You are leaving the American Sector" sign.
In 2001, the
sponsoring association renounced its non-profit status. In the course of
this, Rainer and Alexandra Hildebrandt were accused by former members of
the August 13 working group of enriching themselves personally from the
museum's income and for this purpose using the Dr. Having set up the
Rainer Hildebrandt Foundation in Switzerland. After the death of Rainer
Hildebrandt in 2004, his widow took over the management of the museum.
Under her, the museum turned into a private company. According to
Sybille Frank, Alexandra Hildebrandt “reinvented the former political
center as a place of experience”. The Mauermuseum-Betriebs gGmbH, which
became non-profit in 2019, has been running the museum since 2018;
Managing Director is Alexandra Hildebrandt.
In its permanent exhibition, the Wall Museum documents the history of
the Berlin Wall as well as numerous escape fates, with a focus on the
"assistance of the protecting powers". In addition to photos and
documentation of successful escape attempts, the means of escape will
also be on display: hot air balloons, getaway cars, cable cars and a
mini submarine.
His collection also includes various items such
as Andrei Sakharov's death mask.
In addition, the museum
repeatedly dealt with the nearby border fortifications in public
campaigns. In 1984, for example, it called for ideas for the
(fictitious, because illegal) painting of the western side of the Wall
in a competition "to remind people of the Wall and to deal with it". In
1991 the museum invited to the controversial dialogue between
perpetrators and victims of the GDR regime. In 2004, the museum rented
the adjoining wasteland for a temporary art event and erected the
so-called Freedom Memorial there, which there was a public struggle to
preserve or clear.
With around 850,000 visitors a year, it was
one of the six most visited museums in Berlin in 2012.
Working
group August 13th
On July 16, 1963, Rainer Hildebrandt and other
people founded the association Arbeitsgemeinschaft August 13, named
after August 13, 1961, when the Wall began to be built. The aim of the
association was to help refugees from the GDR. Until 2018, the
association was also responsible for the Wall Museum.
In 2017,
the working group gave the number of people killed at the Wall and the
inner-German border up to 1989 as 1,899. This also includes victims
fleeing across the Baltic Sea, German fatalities on non-German borders,
killed GDR soldiers and Soviet deserters, suicides by members of the
border troops, as well as people kidnapped and killed by the Stasi and
KGB after a successful escape. The numbers have been criticized by
scientists as being too high.