The Museum Island is a building ensemble consisting of five museums in the northern part of the Spreeinsel in the historic center of Berlin. It is one of the most important sights in the German capital and one of the most important museum complexes in Europe. Built between 1830 and 1930 on behalf of the Prussian kings according to plans by five architects, it was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List as a whole in 1999. The Museum Island consists of the Old Museum, the New Museum, the Old National Gallery, the Bode Museum and the Pergamon Museum. Since the reunification of Germany, it has been renovated and expanded as part of the Museum Island master plan. On July 12, 2019, the James Simon Gallery opened as a new visitor center. Also in the northern part of the Spreeinsel is the Berlin Cathedral at the Lustgarten, as well as the Humboldt Forum, which is used for museums and culture and was built in the form of the Berlin Palace by 2021.
The northernmost, orographically lowest section of the Spreeinsel was
a marshy floodplain in the Middle Ages. This resulted in special
features of the subsoil (Kolke). While the town of Cölln was built on
the southern, slightly higher part of the island in the 13th century,
the northern part was only used much later as a garden belonging to the
Berlin Palace. In the 17th century, the left arm of the Spree was
canalised. Today's Kupfergraben was created, which drained the northern
part of the island. The Cöllnische Werder developed between the Spree
and the Kupfergraben, on which a pleasure garden was created after the
mid-17th century.
The site has been used for various purposes
over the course of its history: During the time of the Great Elector and
his son Friedrich I, it served as the location for the so-called
"Pomeranzenhof" (an orangery for tropical fruits, palm trees and exotic
plants), which was used to run the pleasure garden was essential, since
the precious ornamental trees for the pleasure garden had to be kept
there in winter. With the construction of the Berlin Fortress between
1658 and 1683, the moat in Cologne was diverted to the Spree within
Bastion XIII. After the fortress was demolished, this connection between
the Kupfergraben and the Spree remained as a canal and the northern part
of the Spreeinsel was an independent island. Under the "soldier king"
Friedrich Wilhelm I, the commercial use of the site came to the fore: in
1748, as one of the last remnants of the pleasure garden, the orangery
house was converted into a packing yard in which commercial goods and
goods were stored. A wooden slewing crane was installed on the quay to
lift goods from the ships onto the quay. In 1776, a flour warehouse was
built next to the crane system. A salt magazine followed.
This
strong commercial orientation of the entire site only gradually gave way
to a use as a location for museum buildings in the course of the 19th
century: In 1797, King Friedrich Wilhelm II took up the suggestion of
the archaeologist and art professor Aloys Hirt, a museum for the
exhibition of ancient and modern to build art treasures. 1810 was in a
cabinet order from King Friedrich Wilhelm III. determined to create "a
public, well-chosen collection of art." With this order, he also served
the ever louder calls from the educated middle class for publicly
accessible art collections.
Karl Friedrich Schinkel presented the
plans for the new building in 1822, which resulted in a comprehensive
reorganization of the northern Spree island. In addition to building the
museum, Schinkel's development plan envisaged the construction of
several bridges and the straightening of the Kupfergraben. Wilhelm von
Humboldt took over the management of the commission for the construction
of the museum.
The construction of the museum began in 1823 when
the connecting canal was filled in. After seven years of construction,
the Altes Museum was opened in 1830 as the first building on today's
Museum Island. It was also Prussia's first public museum. In 1859 the
Royal Prussian Museum (today: New Museum) was opened. The National
Gallery followed in 1876 (today: Old National Gallery), in 1904 the
Kaiser Friedrich Museum (today: Bode Museum, renamed in 1956 after the
German art historian and long-time general director of the museums,
Wilhelm von Bode), at the tip of the island, finally in 1930 the
Pergamon Museum, which has only been referred to as such since 1958, in
whose north wing the German Museum, in the east wing the collection of
antiquities with the Pergamon Altar and in whose south wing today’s
Museum of the Near East and today’s Museum of Islamic Art were set up. A
planned wing on the Kupfergraben for today's Egyptian Museum was not
implemented.
Only towards the end of the 1870s was the name
Museum Island generally accepted for the area, thereby also
demonstrating the Prussian claim to build museums that were comparable
to the models in Paris and London. In 1880, at a conference of museum
directors, it was decided that in future only “high art” should be
housed on the Museum Island, which at the time was limited to art from
Europe and the Middle East.
Various expansion projects were
intended to provide additional exhibition space for the collections,
which were constantly suffering from a lack of space. Alfred Messel was
already planning a southern wing extension for his Pergamon Museum,
which would house the Egyptian collection. The numerous technical and
financial difficulties involved in building the museum prevented it from
being carried out.
During the National Socialist period,
monumental new buildings were also planned for the Museum Island as part
of Albert Speer's redesign plans. The architect Wilhelm Kreis designed
four additional huge museum buildings. On the northern bank of the
Spree, opposite the Bodemuseum, a "Germanic Museum", a "Museum of the
19th Century" and a "Museum of Egyptian and Near Eastern Art" were to be
created, which in a later planning phase were to become a purely
Egyptian museum and as the largest the three buildings would have had up
to 75,000 m² of exhibition space. Even Monbijou Castle would have had to
give way to the expansion on the site between Friedrichstrasse,
Oranienburger Strasse and Monbijouplatz. Kreis planned a “World War II
Museum” along the Kupfergraben as an extension of the armory’s
military-historical collections. As a counterpart to the new museum
buildings on the northern bank of the Spree, the Reich architect of the
Hitler Youth, Hanns Dustmann, designed a new ethnological museum on the
southern bank of the Spree, which was to extend between the Stadtbahn
and the Spree to Friedrichstrasse. The war prevented the execution of
all plans.
More than 70 percent of the museums on Museum Island
were destroyed in World War II. The gradual reconstruction of the Museum
Island, now located in East Berlin, from 1950 onwards did not initially
include the Neues Museum, which was the most severely damaged. The ruins
of the New Museum, described as an eyesore, were even supposed to be
demolished at times, which did not happen due to the lack of suitable
alternative quarters for temporary use. It was only in 1987 that the
decision was made to begin the costly security and rehabilitation
measures. A complete restoration of the Museum Island was planned before
1990, but could not be started due to the enormous costs.
After
German reunification, comprehensive renovations of the Museum Island
began in the late 1990s. In 1999, the Board of Trustees of the Prussian
Cultural Heritage Foundation decided on the Museum Island master plan.
This provides for the refurbishment of the building stock, the
structural consolidation into a museum ensemble and the reorganization
of the collections that were divided before 1990.
On the Day of
German Unity 2020, around 70 exhibits in the Pergamon Museum, the New
Museum and the Old National Gallery were sprayed with an "oily liquid";
Among other things, sarcophagi, stone sculptures and paintings from the
19th century were affected. A preliminary investigation into criminal
damage to property has been initiated.
On October 24, the large
granite bowl in front of the Altes Museum was covered in graffiti, which
is why two men were subsequently arrested.
On July 9, 2021, the
Museum Island underground station was opened.
The northern tip of Museum Island is crossed by the Monbijou Bridge,
which connects the island to both banks of the Spree. The two bridges
are closed to public vehicle traffic and form the entrance to the Bode
Museum, a triangular neo-baroque building that dominates the north of
the Museum Island with its large dome.
South of the Bode Museum,
the tracks of the Stadtbahn cross the island and at the same time
separate the Bode Museum from the Pergamon Museum to the south. This
newest building on the Museum Island is also the Berlin museum with the
most visitors and is also internationally famous for several ancient
monumental buildings such as the Pergamon Altar, which gives it its
name. The entrance area is formed by a square delimited by the three
wings of the building, which can be reached via a pedestrian bridge from
Am Kupfergraben street.
To the south of the Pergamon Museum is
the New Museum, which remained in ruins for a long time after the Second
World War and was reopened in October 2009 after 70 years, and to the
east is the Old National Gallery in the form of a raised antique temple
with a front staircase. Above the entrance is a dominating equestrian
statue of Friedrich Wilhelm IV, from which the first sketches for this
building originate.
In front of the entrance to the Old National
Gallery is an open space surrounded by colonnades on three sides, the
so-called Colonnade Courtyard. The colonnades were repaired over a
three-year construction period and the open space was redesigned with
plants close to the ground, an enlarged fountain and bronze sculptures
from the museum collection. On June 6, 2010, the facility was handed
over to the public again.
South of the New Museum and the
National Gallery, Bodestrasse crosses the island, which is accessible
via a bridge over the western arm of the Spree; the subsequent
Friedrichsbrücke over the eastern arm of the Spree is closed to
motorized traffic. South of this street are the Old Museum and the
Lustgarten in the western part of the island and the Berlin Cathedral in
the eastern part, between which the small street Am Lustgarten connects
the Bodestrasse with the important traffic axis Unter den Linden -
Schloßplatz - Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse. This large street forms a clear
southern boundary of the relatively traffic-calmed Museum Island.
North of the Berlin Cathedral, opposite the Old National Gallery,
there is a special spectacle for ornithologists every evening in summer,
when tens of thousands of starlings fly to their roosts in the trees of
the chestnut grove there.
The five museums on the Museum Island all belong to the museum
association of the Berlin State Museums, which in turn are part of
the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Along with the
Kulturforum in Tiergarten, the area around Charlottenburg Palace and
the Museumszentrum Berlin-Dahlem, the Museum Island is one of the
museum centers in Berlin.
The buildings on the Museum Island
mainly house the archaeological collections and art from the 19th
century. After reunification, a start was made on merging the
collections, some of which were separated in East and West. As part
of the Museum Island master plan, a reorganization and joint
presentation of the collections of all museums is planned. On July
12, 2019, the James Simon Gallery opened as a new visitor center for
the entire Museum Island. It also houses function rooms for special
exhibitions, an information center, the museum shop, a café and
restaurants. The building also serves as access to the
Archaeological Promenade, which will connect four of the island's
five museums.
On the main floor, the Old Museum shows part of
the antiquities collection with sculptures, ceramics, weapons,
jewelery and implements from Greek art and cultural history from the
Cycladic culture to Hellenism. From August 2005 to 2009, the
Egyptian Museum was located on the upper floor. Until then, part of
it was housed in the Pergamon Museum, later in the Bode Museum, but
also partly in Charlottenburg. Etruscan and Roman art and culture
has been on display here since 2010.
The New Museum was
rebuilt by mid-2009 as part of the Museum Island master plan. Since
reopening on October 16, 2009, it has housed the Egyptian Museum and
Papyrus Collection with the famous bust of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti
and other works of art from the time of King Akhenaten. The
exhibitions of the Museum of Pre- and Early History with finds from
the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age, from Troy with copies of
Schliemann gold, from Cyprus, from the Roman provinces, the
migration of peoples and the early Middle Ages and later epochs can
also be seen here . The Cyprus collection in particular reflects the
unifying character of the Museum Island; it is made up of holdings
from the Antiquities Collection, the Museum of Prehistory and Early
History and the Coin Cabinet.
The three wings of the Pergamon
Museum house architectural structures as well as Greek and Roman
sculptures from the collection of antiquities, the Near Eastern
Museum with 6000 years of history, art and culture in the Near East
and the Museum of Islamic Art with art from the Islamic peoples from
the 8th to the 19th century. The Pergamon Museum has become known
worldwide for the impressive reconstructions of archaeological
building ensembles such as the Pergamon Altar, the Market Gate of
Miletus, the Ischtar Gate including the Processional Way from
Babylon and the Mshatta facade. The fourth wing, which is still to
be built, will house the monuments of the Egyptian Museum, such as
the Kalabsha Gate and the columned hall of King Sahure, as well as
the Tell Halaf facade of the Near Eastern Museum, which is currently
being reassembled in an external depot of the State Museums after
being destroyed in the war. be visible.
The collection of the
Alte Nationalgalerie shows sculptures and paintings from the 19th
century, from Caspar David Friedrich to the French Impressionists
and frescoes by the Nazarenes active in Rome.
The Bode
Museum, which reopened on October 17, 2006, shows Byzantine works of
art from the 3rd to the 15th century in the Museum of Byzantine Art,
Italian and German sculptures and sculptures from the early Middle
Ages to the 18th century in the sculpture collection, and coin
series from the beginning in the coin cabinet coinage in the 7th
century BC in Asia Minor to the coins and medals of the 21st century
as well as selected items from the Old Masters Collection in the
Picture Gallery. The Big Maple Leaf was stolen in March 2017.
The move of the bust of Nefertiti from the Old Museum to the
reopened New Museum can be clearly seen in the number of visitors
published each year. In 2010, the Neues Museum and Pergamonmuseum
were the two most frequented museums in Berlin. With 1.1 million
visitors, the James-Simon-Galerie had the highest number of
receptions in 2019.
The master plan for the Museum Island is the result of an
architectural competition launched in 1993, which the Italian Giorgio
Grassi won after heated controversy in the jury. The sculptural design
by the American architect Frank Gehry, which was favored by the museum
directors, was not successful. After many revisions, Grassi withdrew
from the planning in 1996, and the London architect David Chipperfield
was commissioned to restore the Neues Museum and to plan and construct a
new reception building for the collections of the Museum Island on the
Kupfergraben in Berlin.
The Museum Island master plan envisages
renovating all buildings and adapting the building technology to the
requirements of modern museums. At the same time, the individual museums
are also to be combined structurally into a common museum complex.
Models for this are the Louvre in Paris, the Vatican Museums in Rome,
the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg and the British Museum in London. In
the area of the Alter Packhof, directly south-west of the New Museum,
the James-Simon-Galerie has already been created as a common reception
and entrance building. This is intended to serve as the central starting
point for an underground tour, the Archaeological Promenade, which will
link all the museums on the Museum Island apart from the Old National
Gallery. It is intended to make it easier for visitors to access the
individual museums and at the same time to offer additional space for
general exhibitions. However, all buildings on the Museum Island will
remain as individual buildings with their own entrance.
In 1999,
the general director of the Berlin State Museums, Peter-Klaus Schuster,
suggested building a new building to complement the collections of the
Bode Museum on the site of the Engels barracks on Kupfergraben, in order
to show the encyclopedic range of Berlin's painting and sculpture
collections to show appropriately. He called this project Master Plan
II. For reasons of space, the Bode Museum alone cannot comprehensively
show the concept of the planned integrated display of paintings from the
picture gallery, sculptures and the related arts from late antiquity to
the Enlightenment. According to Schuster, the Bode Museum should contain
everything from late antiquity to a large Renaissance ensemble, and the
following era will find its space in the new building. In the case of a
new building on the Kupfergraben, the building at the Kulturforum, which
was inaugurated in 1998 and now houses the collection of the picture
gallery, will presumably serve the National Gallery, which is under a
lot of space, to store the paintings that have been stored in their
depots, such as GDR art show.
In 2001, the President of the
Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, added the
idea to Master Plan III to bring the Museums of Ethnology, East Asian
and Indian Art and European Cultures, which had been relocated to Dahlem
since the Second World War, back to the city center, where they were
housed until in the 1920s resided. As part of the new construction of
the Humboldt Forum in the external design of the former Berlin Palace on
the neighboring Schlossplatz on Museum Island, there are now plans to
create a cultural center here with the Forum as a museum and an "Agora"
as an event space for representative occasions: According to the plans,
in addition to the collections of non-European cultures, it will house
the Berlin Central Library and part of the Humboldt University's history
of science collections.
According to the Prussian Cultural
Heritage Foundation, the implementation of the three master plans will
make the Museum Island the world's largest universal museum for world
art and world cultures. However, the financing of the new art gallery
and the reconstruction of the city palace is still open, since the
Bundestag has not passed a budgetary resolution. The cost of building
the Humboldt Forum/Berlin Palace was initially given as 670 million
euros. In addition to the use of tax money, mixed financing from
donations and the issue of so-called "Schlossaktie" as well as (partial)
financing by private investors are under discussion. According to plans
from 2007, 480 million euros are enough for a slimmed-down version, and
private investors should be completely dispensed with.
The Old
National Gallery was reopened on December 2, 2001 after extensive
renovations. The Bode Museum was also completely restored by the end of
2005 and officially reopened on October 17, 2006, the renovated New
Museum followed with the reopening on October 16, 2009. The Old Museum
was completely renovated until 2011 while the museum was still open. The
Pergamon Museum has been renovated in sections since 2008 and a fourth
wing has been added in the form of a glass transom on the Kupfergraben.
The new James Simon Gallery opened on July 12, 2019. There were lively
public discussions in connection with the plans for the picture gallery
and a spatial approach to the sculpture collection in the Bodemuseum.
The costs for the already completed and still planned measures of
the Museum Island master plan (without the construction of the Humboldt
Forum) were originally estimated at around one billion euros, today it
is assumed that the total costs will be around 1.5 billion euros: for
the Bode Museum around 150 million euros, the New Museum around 295
million euros, the Old Museum around 74 million euros and the Pergamon
Museum around 523 million euros. The federal government bears the costs
for the realization of the master plan.
The Berlin public mainly discussed the implementation of the first
architect's plan from 2001 from an architectural-aesthetic point of
view. In particular, the reconstruction of the New Museum, which is not
true to the original, and the architectural language of the
supplementary building (new entrance building/Master Plan II) by David
Chipperfield are criticized. A citizens' initiative, which began in 2007
to collect signatures for a referendum to prevent the implementation of
the first Chipperfield draft, campaigned against this planning variant
and for a building in the historical style.
In November 2006, the
budget committee of the Bundestag surprisingly and at short notice
released 73 million euros for construction, so that planning and
construction on the Museum Island could be completed before 2020. On
June 27, 2007, the completely revised design by the architectural office
of David Chipperfield for the James-Simon-Galerie was presented to the
public in Berlin with great interest. The focus of this design is the
installation of a surrounding, publicly accessible colonnade gallery and
a covered city loggia modeled on the Acropolis on a high base facing the
western arm of the Spree. These new buildings are intended to connect
all the museums on Berlin's Museum Island and make them accessible from
a central point. The general director of the Berlin State Museums,
Peter-Klaus Schuster, associated this concept with the term “city
crown”, which dates back to the 1920s, and with buildings by Alfred
Messel and Mies van der Rohe.
Following the publication of the
new Chipperfield draft, the citizens' initiative announced on July 4,
2007 that it would suspend the collection of signatures on the citizens'
petition until the architect had made detailed plans. She suggested
setting up a three-dimensional batter board before construction begins
in order to examine the golden section on a 1:1 model.