The Humboldt Forum in the Berlin Palace is a universal museum in the Mitte district of Berlin. In addition to the Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art of the Berlin State Museums, it is also home to the Berlin exhibition of the Berlin City Museum and the Humboldt Laboratory of the Humboldt University of Berlin. In addition, accompanying events, exhibitions and guided tours take place in the facility supported by the Humboldt Forum Foundation in the Berlin Palace. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it first opened digitally on December 16, 2020, and then opened to the general public on July 20, 2021. In the first 365 days, the Humboldt Forum recorded around 1.5 million visitors.
In remembrance of the intellectual legacy of Alexander and Wilhelm
von Humboldt, the forum is intended to house several museum collections
from all over the world - e.g. of the Dahlem museums - bring together,
offer event rooms for science and culture, complement the museum island,
provide information about the history of the palace and at the same time
serve to restore a milestone in baroque architecture as well as a main
reference point of German history and the historic cityscape of
Berlin-Mitte. With display collections from the Berlin State Museums,
the Berlin City Museum and the Humboldt University in Berlin, the Forum
is expanding what the Museum Island has to offer, creating one of the
largest connected cultural ensembles in the world. On December 16, 2020,
the forum was initially opened digitally, on July 20, 2021 it also
opened to visitors.
The Humboldt Forum Foundation in the Berlin
Palace, which was founded in mid-2009 as the Berlin Palace – Humboldt
Forum Foundation, acts as the developer, owner and operator of the
Humboldt Forum. It coordinates and bundles the interests of users,
organizes a permanent exhibition Historical Center Berlin - Identity and
Reconstruction and acquires donations for the reconstruction of the
historical facades and the construction of the Humboldt Forum. The
collections of non-European art from the Prussian Cultural Heritage
Foundation were moved from the Berlin-Dahlem Museum Center to the
exhibition rooms of the Humboldt Forum. The large entrance hall of the
building complex should act as a connecting element with cross-thematic
events and be a special crowd puller - in the sense of Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz' idea of a comprehensive science theater.
With their range of collections, specialist libraries and event
rooms, the Humboldt Forum and the Museum Island are intended to form a
connection between art, culture and science. Linking the collections of
European art and culture on the Museum Island with the non-European
museums in the Humboldt Forum creates a dialogue between world cultures
in the heart of the German capital. The new Universal Museum houses the
Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art, among other things. The
collections of non-European art housed in the Berlin-Dahlem Museum
Center until 2017 include over 500,000 artefacts and works of art. The
airboat was brought into the Humboldt Forum in May 2018, as it could no
longer have been transported into the building after the museum was
completed due to its size.
After the foundation of the Berlin Palace Association in 1992 under
the direction of Wilhelm von Boddien, the Federal Government and the
Senate of Berlin set up the International Commission of Experts on the
Historical Center of Berlin, chaired by Hannes Swoboda, in November 2000
to come up with proposals for the architecture and use of a new building
to develop the castle square. The commission included experts from
various professions, including historians, architects, museologists and
monument conservators, as well as politicians from the SPD, CDU, Greens
and PDS. In April 2002, the expert commission presented its final
report, in which it recommended restoring the baroque façade of the
Berlin Palace in connection with using it as a museum of world cultures
under the term Humboldt Forum. On the basis of this recommendation, the
German Bundestag approved the project on July 4, 2002 with an almost
two-thirds majority.
The building was constructed after the
demolition of the ruins of the Palace of the Republic from 2012 to 2020.
According to a recommendation by the International Commission of Experts
on Historical Center Berlin and a decision by the German Bundestag, it
was built on the Spree side from the outside as a reconstruction of the
Berlin Palace, which is considered the "major work of North German
Baroque", and on the inside as a modernist building by the Italian
architect Franco Stella. The modern parts of the building were mainly
financed by federal funds with 572 million euros, the historical parts
of the building by private donations of more than 105 million euros. The
project to reconstruct the palace goes back to private initiatives and
above all to the commitment of the Berlin Palace Association under
Wilhelm von Boddien. The association has a permanent exhibition space in
the tourist information center at the Schlueterhof. In the course of the
project, the costs rose from 595 million euros to 677 million euros due
to construction delays and technical defects. Berlin's share of the
construction costs remained at 32 million euros.
With the
accommodation of collections from the National Museums in Berlin and the
Humboldt University in Berlin, the usage concept provides for a link to
the cultural tradition of the Berlin Palace, which originally housed the
Brandenburg-Prussian Kunstkammer, which is considered the nucleus of the
Berlin museums: The Kunstkammer, founded around 1550 by Elector Joachim
II, included objects from all areas of nature, art and science. After
being plundered in the Thirty Years' War, it was rebuilt by Elector
Friedrich Wilhelm from 1640 and moved to the Berlin Palace from 1700 by
the first Prussian King Friedrich I. During the Napoleonic Wars, the
collection was taken to Paris in 1807 as looted art before returning to
Berlin in 1815, the year of liberation. In the 19th century, the objects
in the Kunstkammer were finally distributed to the Friedrich Wilhelm
University (today: Humboldt University) and the Royal Museums (today:
State Museums in Berlin).
Ground floor
On the ground floor of the Humboldt Forum in the
Berlin Palace are the foyer in the Eosanderhof to the west, the
arcade in the Stellahof in the middle and the Schlueterhof to the
east, each with restaurants, cafés and museum shops. The castle
cellar (access via the foyer), the video panorama (access via the
passage), the sculpture hall (access via the Schlüterhof) and the
Friends of the Berlin Palace (access via the tourist info) provide
information about the history of the location.
1st floor
The Humboldt Laboratory of the Humboldt University of Berlin and the
Berlin exhibition of the City Museum Berlin Berlin Global are
located on the first floor.
2nd Floor
The Ethnological
Museum of the Berlin State Museums is located on the second floor
with the America, Africa and Oceania departments. The Americas
department consists of the First Nations of the Northwest Coast, Am
Humboldtstrom, Language, Script, Calendar, Show Magazine America,
Mesoamerica and Collections from South America rooms; the Africa
department from the rooms The Kingdom of Benin, Benin Bronzes in
Berlin, Schaumagazin Afrika and Colonial Cameroon; the Oceania
section from Man and Sea, Oceanian Collections, Rituals and Beliefs,
Oceanian Buildings and Sounds of the World.
3rd floor
The
Asia department of the Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian
Art of the Berlin State Museums are located on the third floor. The
Asia department of the Ethnological Museum consists of the rooms
Handicrafts in Central Asia, Orient and Occident, The Asian Theater
and Aspects of Islam. The Museum of Asian Art consists of the rooms
Religious Art of Southeast Asia, Religious Art of South Asia,
Buddhism, Jainism, Northern Silk Road, Himalayas, Religious Art of
South Asia, Hinduism, Court Art, Northern Silk Road, Art of Japan,
Tea House, Sacred Art of East Asia, Art from China and Korea, study
collections as well as China and Europe.
Attic
In the
attic is the roof terrace with restaurant. At a height of 30 meters,
it offers views of the Berlin Cathedral and the Museum Island in the
north, the Red City Hall and the television tower in the east, the
New Marstall and the State Council building in the south, and the
boulevard Unter den Linden and the Brandenburg Gate in the west.
Criticism of the forum
Some art historians and ethnologists
criticize the concept of the Humboldt Forum with the motto "One house,
four actors", the handling of the Ethnological Museum with collections
from colonial contexts and the provenance research carried out as
insufficient. Since the conception of the building, the museum
preparation of the approximately 20,000 exhibits has been the essential
aspect by which the large museum will be measured, in particular the
exhibits that come from German and other colonies. Art historians and
ethnologists rated the provenance research as insufficient, criticized
the lack of awareness of the problem and spoke of "colonial amnesia"
(Jürgen Zimmerer). As early as August 6, 2015, Mark Siemons pointed out
in the FAZ that the "old colonial perspective could only be perpetuated
in a friendlier form". However, he also sees a positive development and
praised the fact that the handling of the content has become much more
sensitive since the first content planning.
On October 17, 2016,
the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation described the Humboldt Forum
as an "epicenter of shared heritage". According to Mark Siemons, the
catchphrase “shared heritage” contained “something else for all its
critical and progressive gesture: an ongoing claim to the cultures,
which in the same breath one wants to respect in their intrinsic value”.
After the real opening on July 20, 2021, the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung saw little connection to the naming as "Humboldt Forum".
Art historian Bénédicte Savoy resigned from the Humboldt Forum's
Advisory Board in 2017, urging the project to be honest. This includes
the critical examination of 300 years of collecting activity "with all
the messes and hopes that are associated with it. That's us, that's
Europe.” The Humboldt Forum is “like Chernobyl” – it's buried under a
“lead blanket” “like nuclear waste” so that nothing gets out.
Furthermore, Savoy sees an “unsolvable contradiction” between the castle
copy and the exhibition. The architecture signals that history can be
“undone”. But the nations that ask for the return of stolen objects are
told the opposite: history cannot be undone. Politicians have decided to
rebuild the castle, but are now avoiding a critical examination of it.
As a result, Monika Grütters (CDU) and founding director Neil MacGregor
tried to “save what can still be saved,” said Savoy in 2017. Savoy
criticized, especially with regard to the origin of objects from former
colonies, that the name Humboldt was only for the forum a "label".
Because the Humboldts' credo is the combination of collections, research
and teaching - and this is exactly what is not being realized in the
Humboldt Forum.
In March 2018, Hanno Rauterberg expressed the
following fundamental criticism of the claim and the content of the
collections: "Anyone who starts to ask questions about the origin of the
objects and their acquisition history will quickly realize that the
makers of the Humboldt Forum are committing a self-deception sit up They
want to praise the castle as a place of tolerance and prudence, here one
shows 'respect for other cultures' (Hermann Parzinger) - and yet the
collections are not based solely on world curiosity and a spirit of
discovery. They also owe themselves to great violence and domination.”
In December 2020, the ZDF Magazin Royale criticized, among other
things, that many of the exhibits came from the colonial era and,
especially in the period before the First World War, had been illegally
stolen from what was then German colonies or had been acquired as stolen
goods from other colonies. One example is the so-called Benin Bronzes,
which were stolen from the Kingdom of Benin by British colonial troops
in 1897 and to which Nigeria lays claim. They are owned by the
Ethnological Museum and are to be exhibited in the Humboldt Forum. When
asked, a spokesman for the Minister of State for Culture explained in
December 2020 that the letter from Nigeria that had already been
received and answered in 2019 did not contain an official request for
return. In an article from 2020, the journalist Markus Grill also
criticized the handling of the collections of human remains in the
holdings of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and
Prehistory (BGAEU).
In his speech at the opening of the Humboldt
Forum’s ethnological exhibitions on September 22, 2021, Federal
President Steinmeier said: “Museums that not only present artefacts that
also seriously address the history of colonialism will have to look
different from traditional museums.”
Thomas Oberender, Artistic
Director of the Berliner Festspiele, criticized in an article in Zeit
2019 that the Humboldt Forum, which was built on the site of the Palace
of the Republic, addressed German colonial history, but disregarded the
"inner-German colonialism" between West and East Germany , which also
manifested itself in the demolition of the GDR building. The journalist
Michael Pilz criticized the 2021 exhibition on WDR 5 for showing
exhibits from the colonial era next to objects from the Palace of the
Republic and thereby strengthening the conviction of young East Germans
who see reunification as a form of colonization by the West.
Criticism of the Castle
Criticism is primarily directed at elements
of the castle dome, both at the top of the cross on the orb and at an
inscription in golden letters that runs around the drum and reflects
Christianity's claim to power: "There is no other salvation, there is no
other name either given to men, because the name of Jesus, in honor of
the Father, that in the name of Jesus all knees should bow, which are in
heaven and on earth and under the earth.” This, according to the
criticism, contradicts the open and modern claim of the Humboldt Forum.
Supporters of the cupola cross refer to the democratic decision to
reconstruct it true to the original and the importance of the cross as a
symbol. Markus Dröge, the bishop of the Evangelical Church at the time,
opposed criticism of the domed cross, referring to the “forgiving spirit
of the cross”. It was "completely inappropriate to still claim today
that the symbol of the cross would prevent a dialogue between cultures
on an equal footing," said Dröge. Aiman Mazyek, chairman of the Central
Council of Muslims in Germany, also defended the dome cross. "The cross
belongs on the castle dome because the building has a historical
context, and this historical context has to do with Christianity and
Christian symbolism," says Mazyek. One should not obscure this context
or compulsively abolish it.
A second inscription is engraved all
around the imperial orb installed in 2020: “In memory of my husband
Werner A. Otto 1909-2011. Inga Maren Otto". The widow of the
entrepreneur Werner Otto had donated one million euros for the cross and
was allowed to have this dedication on the orb under the cross at the
top of the Humboldt Forum building. The Süddeutsche Zeitung ran the
headline: "Otto thinks it's good."
The history of the place, the
architecture of the building and the content shown in the Humboldt Forum
are more than in other German cultural institutions as "superimposed
levels charged with symbolic politics," said the art historian Laura
Goldenbaum. The cross does not only function here as the crowning of the
roof of the dome. Taking the inscription literally, the Humboldt Forum
principle could be severely affected. According to Rosenbaum, Alexander
von Humboldt, about whom even his brother Wilhelm was unable to say
whether he 'had a religion or not', might have preferred a universal
cross-free dome structure in which earth and cosmos and also the
different cultures would be reflected in equal measure .
Niklas
Maak wrote in the FAZ that the interior, Franco Stella's glaringly
neon-lit grid architecture, is reminiscent of large shopping centers and
airport office buildings with long escalators. The subsequent crossing
resembles the inner courtyard of a Motel One. "Friends of old Berlin"
should only look at the palace from the outside. The Berliner Morgenpost
wrote that the interiors were designed in a modern way – white, simple
and purely functional.