The DDR Museum Berlin (in its own spelling also DDR Museum) is a privately run museum in the DomAquarée in Berlin's Mitte district. In its permanent exhibition, it deals with the life and everyday culture of the GDR (German Democratic Republic aka East Germany). In 2015, with 584,000 visitors, it was one of the most visited museums and memorial sites in Berlin. Since September 1, 2021, the DDR Museum: Motorcycle exhibition (formerly: 1st Berlin Motorcycle Museum) has been part of the DDR Museum as a second building. The motorcycle exhibition on 800 m² includes over 130 motorcycles produced in the GDR.
The museum covers the subject areas of the GDR state border, Berlin, traffic, the Berlin Wall, the Stasi, consumption, GDR products, nutrition, building, living, partnership, family, equality, private niches, media, literature, education, childhood, youth and work , fashion, culture, leisure time, music, vacation, health, army, opposition, party, state, ideology, sister states, GDR opposition, penal system, economy, environment and government. In contrast to other museums, the majority of the exhibits in this exhibition can be touched: you can sit in a Trabant, rummage through the cupboards in the prefab apartment or try on clothes with a digital mirror.
The permanent
exhibition consists of three different areas. Everyday life in the GDR
is presented in the first exhibition room Public Life. A prefabricated
housing estate on a scale of 1:20 is divided into thematic blocks such
as education, consumption, sport, music or vacation. Many of the
exhibits on display may be touched. There is also a Trabant driving
simulation that visitors can use to drive through a virtual
prefabricated housing estate. A kindergarten, cinema and listening
stations are also located in the first part of the exhibition.
In
the second large room, Party and State, the political structures of the
GDR, the connections to other socialist countries (especially the Soviet
Union) as well as the GDR economy and the military are examined. A
replica interrogation room, a detention cell and a spy room provide
insights into the work of the state security. Other components include a
multi-touch table, an original Volvo from the East German government's
motor pool and animated portraits of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
A built-in prefab elevator takes visitors
to a WBS 70 prefab apartment, which is true to the original and has a
living room, bedroom, children's room, bathroom and kitchen. The five
rooms are equipped with original exhibits that can be taken out of the
drawers and cupboards. East and West German television can be compared
in the living room, GDR music can be evaluated for the museum's internal
chart list and letters can be written on an Erika typewriter. The
digital mirror in the bedroom makes it possible to try on GDR clothing
virtually. In the kitchen you can print out recipes from GDR cookbooks
and take them with you.
Collecting and preserving GDR cultural assets is one of the core tasks
of the museum. According to its own statements, the collection includes
250,000 different objects that are housed in a spacious depot. The
museum scientists have been working on recording the extensive inventory
for years. Some of the museum objects that have already been cataloged
can be found in the object database of the DDR Museum. In general, the
exhibition does not necessarily focus on the individual objects, but
rather on the scenic composition of the exhibits. This conveys the
experience.
Parts of the collection are shown in the permanent
and special exhibitions. Selected exhibits are:
Environmental Library
printing press (environmental sheets)
Film projector of the State
Council of the GDR
Trabant 601
deficiency diary
Crib wagon (in
the Kindergarten area)
Mural In Praise of Communism by Ronald Paris
Doping Oral Turinabol
1 megabit chip
Volvo 264 TE from the
Minister fleet
Simson Schwalbe KR 51/1 (in the garage area)
The entire exhibition is
interactive. From October 2010 to March 2015, a GDR restaurant was
attached to it, where visitors could experience typical GDR cuisine.
This area was remodeled for the third exhibition space, the WBS-70
apartment, which opened in August 2016.
Exhibits include a “Lack
Diary”, a ceiling light from the Palace of the Republic and a Volvo 264
TE official limousine. A nine-metre-long 1969 mural by Ronald Paris
entitled In Praise of Communism, formerly located in the House of
Statistics, has been moved to the museum shop at the end of the
exhibition.
The DDR Museum project was brought to life by the Freiburg
ethnologist Peter Kenzelmann. According to media reports, he was looking
for a museum on the GDR on a trip to Berlin and found none. The house
was opened on July 15, 2006. Gordon Freiherr von Godin has been the
director since May 2016, and Stefan Wolle is the scientific director.
On July 14, 2007, the museum celebrated its one-year anniversary,
claiming to have received 180,000 visitors in its first year. The museum
was nominated for the European Museum of the Year Award in 2008 and 2012
and was ranked 44th in the 2015 survey by the German National Tourist
Board (DZT) and 36th in the top 100 travel destinations by international
guests in 2016 been. On December 23, 2009, the museum had its one
millionth visitor. A second part of the permanent exhibition with new
focal points and numerous media stations was opened on October 10, 2010.
The third part of the permanent exhibition was opened in August 2016,
showing a WBS 70 prefab apartment. On November 7, 2017, the museum
welcomed its five millionth visitor.
On August 4, 2018, the
multimedia exhibition nineties berlin, designed by the DDR Museum team,
opened. Until December 28, 2019, it was in the Alte Münze in
Berlin-Mitte. It shows life in Berlin after the fall of the Wall with
the new open spaces that emerged in the 1990s. The nineties berlin
exhibition picks up where the historical presentation of the DDR Museum
ends.
In the early morning of December 16, 2022, the acrylic
glass cylinder burst and the contents of the AquaDom spilled into the
hotel and street area and finally found its way into the museum.
According to initial estimates, 300-400 m² of the 1200 m² of exhibition
space will be affected. As a result, the main part of the DDR Museum in
the DomAquarée is expected to be closed until March 31, 2023 (as of
January 17, 2023), with the motorcycle exhibition remaining open.
The DDR Museum is a private
initiative and does not receive state funding. The sponsor is the DDR
Museum Berlin GmbH with the two managing directors Gordon Freiherr von
Godin and Quirin Graf Adelmann von Adelmannsfelden (as of May 2016).
There is a non-profit association for support, the DDR Museum Berlin
e. V. There is also a DDR Museum Verlag publishing the museum's
publications.