The New 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 on behalf of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV between 1843 and 1855
in the style of classicism and neo-Renaissance, it is considered the
main work of Friedrich August Stüler.
After the destruction in
the Second World War and the further decay of the ruins in the GDR era,
it was restored in a simplified form by David Chipperfield in 1999-2009.
It currently houses the Egyptian Museum and the Papyrus Collection, the
Museum of Prehistory and Early History and part of the Antiquities
Collection.
In 2019, the Neues Museum recorded 828,000 visitors,
making it the most visited museum of the State Museums.
Reconstruction 1999 to 2009
After the extensive securing of the
foundations and walls, the museum was rebuilt between 1999 and 2009 as
part of the Museum Island master plan for around 295 million euros.
During the restoration, the completely destroyed north-west wing and the
south-east risalit were rebuilt in close accordance with the original
volumes and room sequences according to plans by the English architect
David Chipperfield, and the surviving components were restored and
supplemented. Since reopening on October 16, 2009, two Berlin museums
have returned to their place of origin: the Egyptian Museum with the
papyrus collection and the Museum of Prehistory and Early History.
The reconstruction as part of the Museum Island master plan followed
the concept of supplementary restoration. This included the closure of
the building's courtyard and exterior facades over the historic floor
plan. Structuring elements of the preserved facades were included in the
supplemented facades, original features of the building were preserved
and the numerous removed components were reintegrated. The additions are
shown openly and are recognizable as such.
This concept was
binding for the 1993 international architectural competition for the
reconstruction of the New Museum, which did not bring satisfactory
results. In 1997, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation commissioned
the architect David Chipperfield to rebuild the New Museum. In his
plans, he replaces the destroyed south-east projection and the
north-west wing with replacement buildings of the same volume. The brick
masonry of the new facades follows the preserved northern avant-corps
and the south-west wing in terms of material and structure. He refrains
from reconstructing lost interior fittings, especially the large
staircase. Chipperfield secures, repairs and completes the ruins of the
Neues Museum, which, in his words, "should escape a dehistoricizing
reconstruction as well as a romanticizing old-new rhetoric or the
monumentalization of its destruction". After the loss of classicist
interiors in the Glyptothek and in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich as a
result of the Second World War, the partly preserved interior of the
Neues Museum is one of the last remaining testimonies of the museum
building of this time in Germany.
On June 27, 2007, David
Chipperfield presented the first revision of his widely criticized 2001
design entitled Berlin Acropolis. The transparent and filigree-looking
colonnade building on a high basement level facing the west arm of the
Spree met with a wide response from the Berlin public and mostly
positive reactions.
Visitor Center and Archaeological Promenade
In addition to the refurbishment of the individual museums, the master
plan for the Museum Island also includes combining the buildings into
one museum complex. Central elements of this summary are the new
entrance building with visitor center, the James Simon Gallery, and the
Archaeological Promenade, which as an underground tour connects all
buildings on the Museum Island except for the Old National Gallery. The
promenade runs through the New Museum in the Greek Court, under the
large staircase hall and in the Egyptian Court with exhibitions on the
themes of chaos and cosmos, time and history, and death and
transfiguration. During the renovation phase, however, only the rooms
within the New Museum will be created. The connecting pieces to the Old
Museum and the Pergamon Museum will be added later. The James Simon
Gallery, also designed by David Chipperfield, was built between the
Kupfergraben and the Neues Museum. The early approval of 73 million
euros after a longer planning freeze for the visitor center on November
9, 2006 suggests that construction will start in 2009 and be completed
in 2011/2012. This is to be accompanied by an extensive revision of the
original designs, which critics complained about as too modern and
inappropriate to the environment.
On June 24, 2003, Minister of
State for Culture Christina Weiss stated at the ceremony marking the
start of construction of the New Museum that the master plan “had almost
managed to square the circle: showcasing the buildings as historical
heritage, sensibly directing the flow of visitors and providing a modern
infrastructure [ ...].” With the foreseeable delays in the realization
of the James Simon Gallery and the Archaeological Promenade, the
restored museum initially had to cope with the flow of visitors on its
own when it reopened in 2009. In any case, the restored building will
represent a lasting stone monument to its first master builder Friedrich
August Stüler, according to whose wish "the whole thing [should] form a
center for the highest intellectual interests of the people that
probably no other capital could have. "
As early as 1997, the deputy director of the Berlin Palace
Department, Helmut Börsch-Supan, criticized the subsequent
reconstruction concept. The Neues Museum has a "right to be experienced
again in its original idea, because a presentation as a fragment with
its own aesthetic effect [would] subordinate the master builder's plan
to the design intentions of a descendant". At the time, the Berlin state
curator Helmut Engel also called for the reconstruction concept for the
Neues Museum to be developed "not solely on the basis of current
doctrines of monument preservation".
The Gesellschaft
Historisches Berlin e. V. criticized not only the new construction of
the entrance building, but also the type of reconstruction. In its
petition submitted to the German Bundestag in March 2006 with more than
14,000 signatures, the company opposed the construction of the glass
entrance building originally planned in 2001 based on a design by David
Chipperfield. This was justified with the fear that the new construction
of the entrance building could cover two thirds of the western facade of
the Neues Museum. The possible loss of the World Heritage status of the
Museum Island as a result of the design of the new building was also
cited as an argument. Society demanded that the facades and the large
stairwell be restored to their original state.
From March 5,
2007, the Berlin initiative People's Petition - Save the Museum Island
collected signatures for a referendum. The Berlin Senate was asked to
strictly preserve the integrity of the Berlin Museum Island, a World
Heritage Site, and to ensure that any further structural development in
the form of a new building on the Museum Island is avoided. The Berlin
Senate should determine that the interior and exterior design of the
Neues Museum should be based as closely as possible on Stüler's original
plans. In particular, the initiative met with incomprehension the
approach of the Berlin monument protection and the property developer,
who valued the preservation of war and weather damage possibly more
highly than the restoration of the original condition. In particular,
the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which owns the boxes of
Kaulbach's painting cycle for the Great Staircase, among other things,
was accused of lacking responsibility in dealing with a unique museum
building from the classicist era, since it did not decide to restore it
true to the original.
Levels 0-3
The museum's three floors
above ground are accessible via the monumental open staircase.
On
the lower floor in the form of a vault there are collections from the
Pharaonic and Greek times to the afterlife. From this lower floor, a
staircase leads further down into a replica burial chamber.
Finds
from Schliemann's Troy, from Cyprus and Egypt are exhibited on floor 1
(entrance level).
On level 2, in room 201, are the special
exhibits of the Xanten Boy, a bronze figure that has largely been
preserved over the centuries, and the bust of Nefertiti from around 1340
BC. in the north cupola room 210. There is a line of sight between the
north-domed hall with Nefertiti and the south-domed hall 203 with a
larger-than-life statue of the Roman sun god Helios. The migration of
peoples and the expansion of the Roman provinces are also illustrated.
On level 3, the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic, Ice Age, Neolithic,
Bronze Age and Iron Age are presented systematically and comprehensively
with finds. A special exhibit is the Berlin gold hat in room 305 from
the Bronze Age, from the years 1000-800 BC. B.C., from southern Germany
with star symbols lined up in a ribbon.
In 2010, the first year
after the reopening, the Neues Museum was the most visited museum in
Berlin with 1.1 million visitors. In the years that followed, 903,000
(2011) and 701,000 people (2012) visited the museum.
Reception
after reopening
Per
In his description of impressions of the
restored interior of the Neues Museum, entitled "Britty Sensation",
Heinrich Wefing uses the ruins of the past decades, which were badly hit
by bombs, as a contrast: "The wind blew through the fire-blackened
columned halls, grandiose vaults crumbled away. A compelling torso, all
pain and beauty.” Chipperfield’s restoration approach, to preserve and
supplement the fragments of the original substance room by room, is
based on a “respect for the historical, which automatically forbids any
total reconstruction.” dark oak, bronze and fine concrete with marble
admixtures, however, no harmony:
“This house is a
three-dimensional collage, a whirlwind of impressions, spatial moods,
emotional and architectural distortions. […] The real sensation of the
Neues Museum, however, is the realization that this juxtaposition of
opposites, the lack of a large, homogeneous whole, does not detract from
the viewing pleasure. On the contrary, the visitor wanders through the
house in amazement, sometimes happy, sometimes shaking his head, never
sure what is waiting behind the next door, and feels sensuous like
seldom in a museum.”
In the reopened building, fully stocked with exhibits - "Whether
cult, art or everyday life, whether prehistoric or modern - this
museum dares an overview like hardly any other." "Cleverly designed
showcases attract attention, impressively grouped sculptures attract
everyone's attention." There is also "a lot of interaction, many
rapid lines of sight, for example from Nefertiti across the
centuries to Helios, from one solar rule to the next." The reopened
For Rautenberg, the new museum is an expression of a completely
different sense of history than prevailed when it was inaugurated in
the 19th century:
"Once upon a time, this historical picture
proclaimed eternal progress, it permeated the entire house, and
everyone who entered it was to be drawn along, from the Stone Age
upwards, through antiquity and the Renaissance to the glorious
present. Inspired by Hegel's philosophy, human history appeared here
as a linear development, as an unstoppable rise - and of course
Prussia was the culmination of all endeavors. The museum, a place of
state self-presentation.”
While in the original state
sarcophagi or vases would have fitted seamlessly into the
wall-painted "walk-in historical panoramas", today all the scenery,
all historical illusions are perforated, and so the Neues Museum der
Gegenwart is characterized by humility:
“It's a very enticing
form that reflects not only the hermeneutics of archaeologists and
historians, but also, interestingly, something of the nature of the
artworks on display. Many owe themselves to the desire to overcome
the end, death. The exuberant art of the Egyptians in particular
would not have come about without the striving for eternal life. In
the museum, a modern form of the burial chamber, this dream seems to
be fulfilled, albeit again in a paradoxical sense. On the one hand,
the fact that the building is in ruins bears witness to the
transience of everything on earth; on the other hand, everything
transitory becomes immortal here. In this way, the museum consoles
us about finiteness – precisely by showing its wounds, it promises
the timeless.”
Cons
At the
reopening of the Neues Museum in the world, Dankwart Guratzsch
criticized the fact that the "overwhelming spatial creations by the
architect Friedrich August Stüler from the mid-19th century" were
contrasted by a "restoration philosophy of fractures, of spots and
ruins" that a "didactic of the raised index finger" would like to
point out that the building is only a "glued together rubble of the
original from 1855".
"Thus, the joy at the rebirth of a
treasure house for unique exhibits is mixed with the disappointment
that an artificial ruin has been created here with enormous
intellectual effort and for the unbelievable sum of 233 million
euros, while the majesty of the former work of art has been
sacrificed. Almost more than the architect, the dogmatic
preservation of monuments has to fear the verdict of the public.
After the defeat she had to suffer with her objection to the
reconstruction of the Frauenkirche in Dresden, she wanted to set an
example for 'correct' monument protection - and is now facing
disaster. The vain claim to convey the 'experience of history' has
come to an end. The appropriate comment on this can be read in a
note by Schinkel. Whenever the 'irregularity has abused an
arrangement', he noted in his unfinished textbook on architecture,
it has done nothing but 'confuse the prospect of desert and chaos'.”
The Gesellschaft Historisches Berlin also criticized the result
of David Chipperfield's restoration in a statement: "We are
horrified to see the result of the construction work: a humiliated
building, the use of leftovers as a construction program. This house
was an epochal work of art of Prussian-Romantic classicism and the
technical revolutions of that time. At the same time, it was an icon
of the most modern museum conception and the founding museum of the
Museum Island itself. King Friedrich Wilhelm IV planned it as a
builder and a tomb for the expelled spirits, muses and ideals.”
"The patient, seriously injured in the war, was deliberately not
healed: convalescence, reconstruction was forbidden - by Berlin's
monument preservation and the allied institutions and experts. In
fact, archaeology, classical studies, has chosen the present as an
adventure playground. She has set up a well-damaged replacement
antiquity as a noble rubble backdrop for the antique fragments that
are really in a museum. What is praised to us today as 'authentic',
real, is in truth designed 'authenticity', i.e. staged, fake. The
patient's wounds were highlighted and carefully preserved. Missing
body parts have been replaced with fake prosthetics 'modern'. So he
is now there in sackcloth and ashes, an emaciated chronically ill
patient, now a 'classic' long-term care case! Presumably because of
the many protests by the GHB, the color of the corpse of this
building was given a makeover at the last minute, so that we can
admire a mummy of a museum building with a decent make-up.”
You are standing in front of a "cultural shambles of grotesque
proportions": the building is "falsified into its ruins as a
monument", a "fraud against all friends of architecture and
history". The "existing 'authentic', mostly ruinous and damaged
original architecture" had been "manipulated and thus forged".
Missing components were "supplemented with intentionally wrong spare
parts" and "the spirit, harmony and symmetry of the building were
destroyed". The result of the restoration is a "falsification of the
architecture of the house as a whole".
Sound Images – Music in Ancient Egypt (May 21, 2021 to January
16, 2022)
The Kerch Crown – Treasures from Europe’s early days
(October 19, 2017 to September 25, 2022)
Treasures from the
Rhine. The barbarian treasure of Neupotz (December 20, 2016 until
further notice)
Return! stone age. bronze age. Iron Age (29 June
2014 until further notice)
Ancient Egypt (October 17, 2009 until
further notice)
Prehistory and Early History (October 17, 2009
until further notice)
As a contribution to the Year of Germany in
Russia and the Year of Russia in Germany, exhibits from 1000 years
of art, history and culture by Russians and Germans were shown on
the third level from October 6, 2012 to January 13, 2013. The
exhibition showed the deep and varied connections between both
countries in history.
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of
the discovery of the bust of Nefertiti, the exhibition In the Light
of Amarna. 100 years of finding Nefertiti during the Amarna period.
China and Egypt - Cradles of Humanity in collaboration with the
Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, People's Republic of China. Catalog.
In 2010 the museum received the Nostra Award from the European
Commission and the Europa Nostra Association for Cultural Heritage for
outstanding achievements in the field of restoration. Also in 2010, the
conversion received the architecture prize Große Nike (main prize) as
well as a Nike in the category "Detail perfection" from the Association
of German Architects (BDA).
On June 20, 2011, the European Union
awarded the museum the Mies van der Rohe Prize for the successful
combination of "contemporary architecture, restoration and art".
Architect David Chipperfield received the German Architecture Prize on
October 13, 2011 for the reconstruction of the museum
On July 4,
2014, the museum was included as the 15th building in the series of
historical landmarks of engineering architecture in Germany.
Planning
The second museum on Museum
Island was required as an extension for the collections that could not
be housed in the Old Museum. These were the collection of plaster casts,
the Egyptian Museum, the Prehistory and Early History Collection (Museum
of Homeland Antiquities), the Ethnographic Collection and the Print
Room. It is thus the "primordial cell" of the Museum of Prehistory and
Early History, the Egyptian Museum, the Ethnological Museum and the
Museum of Prints and Drawings. In its conception as a universal museum
for a self-contained collection and in the development of its
collections through expansion and the removal of individual collections,
such as the ethnographic collection into its own museums, it documents
in its history the shift from a universal to a special museum as a
general development in history of museums throughout the 19th century.
The Neues Museum is also one of the most important museum buildings
of the 19th century, both as part of the overall Museum Island complex
and as an individual late classicist building. In addition, it is one of
the most important monuments of the history of construction and
technology. With its industrialized construction method and its diverse
iron constructions, it is the first monumental building in Prussia with
the consistent application of new construction techniques made possible
by industrialization. As a further innovation, a steam engine was used
for the first time in Berlin during the construction work, which, among
other things, made it easier to drive the numerous piles into the
ground. The soft, sandy and spongy soil of the Spree and Berlin glacial
valleys requires the buildings in central Berlin to be deeply anchored.
With the construction of the museum, a piece of technological history
was written.
Construction work
Work
on the construction of the New Museum began on June 19, 1841 under the
direction of a commission set up by Friedrich Wilhelm IV, which included
the General Director of the Royal Museums Ignaz von Olfers and Friedrich
August Stüler. The king had previously commissioned Stüler with the
planning by cabinet order dated March 8, 1841. The poor subsoil quickly
became noticeable when the workers came across infusoria, deposits of
kieselguhr, just below the surface. Therefore, a pile grid was required
under the entire building, the 2,344 wooden foundation piles of which
were between 6.90 and 18.20 meters long. To ram the piles, a 5 hp steam
engine was used, which could be increased to 10 hp if necessary. It
drove the pumps for draining the construction site, the elevators and
the mortar mixing machines. The notice of the architects' association in
Berlin reported on the construction site and the new technical devices.
On April 6, 1843, the ceremonial laying of the foundation stone took
place on the foundations that had already been laid down to the basement
level. The walls had been built up to the roof since the end of the same
year, so that in 1844 the builders could move the cornices and finish
the roofs. In 1845 the iron constructions were pulled in, the vaulted
ceilings were bricked up and the connecting gallery to the Old Museum
was completed. An auxiliary railway transported the building materials
from the Kupfergraben to the steam-powered elevator. The transport on
the individual floors of the museum was also carried out on rails. In
1846 the exterior construction, apart from the sculptures in the gable
fields, was completed and the workers began plastering the interior,
setting the steps and laying the floors.
Interior
design
This construction work had progressed so far in 1847 that the
elaborate interior work could begin. The March Revolution of 1848 led to
delays in the construction work, which, however, were never completely
interrupted. As soon as the respective rooms were completed, the
installation of the collections began, which were opened successively
from 1850 to 1859. However, work on parts of the interior, especially on
the wall frescoes in the stairwell, continued until 1866.
The
following report about the Neues Museum is given in the Berlin address
book of 1875:
“The New Museum, which is connected to the Old Museum
by an arcade and a hall above it, was designed according to the original
design by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV and the plan of Geh. Oberbaurath
Stüler and built under his direction 1843-1855."
When it opened, the Egyptian, Patriotic and Ethnographic Collections
were on the ground floor. The first floor housed the collections of
plaster casts of sculptures from Greek and Roman antiquity, Byzantine
art, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Classicism. The second floor
was shared by the Kupferstichkabinett and the so-called "Kunstkammer", a
collection of architectural models, furniture, clay and glass vessels,
church objects and smaller works of art from the Middle Ages and modern
times.
In 1886, the Ethnographic Museum, founded in 1873, moved
into its own building on Königgrätzer Straße, today's Stresemannstraße,
which was destroyed in World War II. This involved moving out of the
Ethnographic Collection, the Collection of Patriotic Antiquities and
parts of the Kunstkammer. In 1875, the newly founded Kunstgewerbemuseum
took over the remaining almost 7,000 objects from the "Kunstkammer" and
also moved into its own building in 1881, today's Martin-Gropius-Bau.
The rooms on the ground floor that had become vacant were occupied by
the Egyptian Collection, while the rooms on the second floor were taken
over by the Prints and Drawings Cabinet.
In the years 1883 to
1887, the Neues Museum was increased by an additional mezzanine floor
that is not visible from the outside. The collection of plaster casts,
which was the focus of the collections at the time of construction, grew
over the course of the 19th century to become one of the largest and
most comprehensive collections of casts. Due to a change in
appreciation, with the exception of the colossal statues, it was given
to the University of Berlin between 1916 and 1920, where it was largely
destroyed in World War II. The vase collection of the Antiquities Museum
and the papyrus collection of the Egyptian Museum have been repositioned
in the halls of the first floor.
Renovations on the ground floor
in the years 1919 to 1923 led to major interventions in the building
fabric for the first time. In the Greek courtyard, the apse was
demolished, the courtyard was covered with a glass roof, a new floor was
installed at the level of the normal ground floor, creating several
halls and cabinets to house the Amarna collection. Also in the adjoining
rooms on the ground floor, suspended ceilings and panels concealed the
original decoration, creating modern, neutral exhibition spaces. In 1929
the transition to the Pergamon Museum was built.
In 1939 the
collections were closed and a large number of artefacts were removed and
secured. Shortly thereafter, the destruction of the Second World War
began. During Allied air raids on 22./23. On November 19, 1943, the
central staircase with the wall frescoes on the history of mankind
burned out. In February 1945, bombs destroyed the north-west wing and
the transition to the Old Museum and damaged the south-west wing and the
south-east risalit. Further destruction occurred in the Battle of Berlin
between the remaining Wehrmacht and SS units and the Soviet forces at
the end of April 1945.
In the post-war period, the Neues Museum was rather neglected. Other
museums on the Museum Island used the less damaged rooms as storerooms.
Reconstruction work did not begin until 1986, which was initially
associated with further (avoidable and unavoidable) demolitions and thus
the loss of historical building fabric. For example, the last remnants
of the Egyptian courtyard were removed and the connecting gallery to the
Old Museum was completely demolished. Numerous components and fragments
were removed and stored for the planned reconstruction. When the
building was secured in 1986, planning to rebuild the Neues Museum
began. The numerous removed components - columns, capitals, cornices,
floors, murals - should serve as templates for the planned extensive
reconstruction of the building. The large staircase hall with Kaulbach's
cycle on the history of mankind was also to be faithfully restored using
the original boxes kept in the National Gallery.
In September
1989, the foundation stone was laid for the true-to-the-original
reconstruction. The turnaround in 1989/1990 made the plans from the GDR
era obsolete. The project ended after reunification.
Exterior
Overview
The Neues Museum is an almost rectangular structure 105 meters long and
40 meters wide, oriented south to north parallel to the Kupfergraben and
perpendicular to the Altes Museum, with which it was connected by a 6.90
meter wide and 24.50 meter wall destroyed in World War II long
connecting gallery with three round arches was connected via
Bodestrasse. The tallest part of the building is the 31 meter high
central building with a staircase. It is linked to the National Gallery,
which was built later but was already included in Stüler's plans, by
colonnades with Doric columns.
The three-storey building wings
are grouped around two inner courtyards, the Greek and the Egyptian
courtyard. Originally only the northern Egyptian courtyard was
glass-covered, the southern Greek courtyard was only provided with a
glass roof during renovations between 1919 and 1923. The central
stairwell is designed as a central avant-corps with flat gables on the
outside and only slightly surpasses the side wings. Its temple fronts
stand for the intellectual claim of the building as a museum. The
eastern main front towards the Old National Gallery with the entrance is
bordered by two windowless corner buildings, whose domes correspond in
shape to those on the colonnades and form a counterweight to the central
risalit.
Behind the simple, rather conventional façade in the
classicist style, there are various iron constructions that were
extremely innovative in the 1840s. Despite the difficult building
ground, they made it possible to have one floor more than Schinkel's
Altes Museum at about the same height and an extraordinary variety of
ceiling shapes. This iron skeleton is hidden behind a rich architectural
backdrop with actual "stagings" in Egyptian, Greek or Roman style. The
importance of the Neues Museum lies less in the external architecture
than in the rich interior design and its iron constructions, which bear
witness to the changes and new possibilities in architecture associated
with industrialization.
facades
Stüler has designed the
exterior of the New Museum in a very reserved and simple way with regard
to the connection with the Old Museum and the planned culture forum. He
writes in the explanations of his publications of 24 lithographs for the
Neues Museum in 1862:
"Due to its location and the connection
with the larger building complex, the new museum lacked the motives for
a similarly grand and characteristic arrangement as shown in the
columned hall of the older museum: therefore the purpose of the building
could only be determined in the detailed forms and in the arrangement of
sculptures be hinted at.”
The sparse sculptural decoration is
essentially limited to the central avant-corps on the façade facing the
Kupfergraben and the National Gallery, the window crosses and the
southern and northern avant-corps.
The New Museum is a plastered
brick building whose facades are structured by incised ashlars. The
execution in different colored plaster was an unusual type of design at
that time and was probably supposed to reinforce the illusion of a
natural stone facade. The eastern main front is symmetrically structured
by a gable-topped central projection and two cupola-topped, windowless
corner projections. Five window axes in the walls between the
avant-corps show windows of different size and shape on each floor,
depending on the room height and the importance of the interior space
behind it. The cornices running at the same height connect the first and
second floor with the Old Museum and reinforce the calm character of the
facade.
The temple front of the central risalit shows the purpose
of the building as a museum and names all the essential elements in the
gable inscription MUSEUM A PATRE BEATISSIMO CONDITUM AMPLIAVIT FILIUS
MDCCCLV (The son enlarged the museum founded by the blessed father in
1855) in gilded copper letters: MUSEUM – the purpose of the building as
a museum, AMPLIAVIT - the extension (of the Old Museum) and MDCCCLV -
the official opening year 1855. The builder Friedrich Wilhelm IV. as
well as his father Friedrich Wilhelm III. are not named (in contrast to
the second dedicatory inscription in hieroglyphs in the Egyptian court).
The 1854 stucco relief History Instructs Architecture, Sculpture,
Painting, and Graphics by sculptor Friedrich Drake illustrates the
museum's educational character. A Borussia by Gustav Blaeser crowns the
gable and probably identifies the building as a museum of the State of
Prussia. The corner acroteria, two bronze griffins, are the work of the
Berlin sculptor Friedrich Wilhelm Wolff. As companions to Apollo, they
refer to him in his role as god of the arts. The monumental, three-axis
window group dominates the central risalit on the second floor with its
edging with columns and pilasters in Doric order on the first and
Corinthian order. The main entrance is located in the central axis on
the ground floor, flanked by two windows.
The two corner
avant-corps are decorated with spherical niche heads and allegories of
the arts and sciences represented by the museum's collections. They were
executed in sandstone by the sculptors August Wredow, Carl Heinrich
Gramzow, Wilhelm Stürmer, Karl Heinrich Möller and Heinrich Berges. The
marbled fields between the figures, clearly visible in the adjacent
drawing of the south avant-corps, set a colorful accent on the outer
facade. The stone mullions of the windows on the first floor in the
walls between the avant-corps show children's figures made of cast zinc
as allegories of the objects in the collection.
The design of the
west facade against the Kupfergraben as the second viewing side is based
on the east facade. Instead of the two corner avant-corps there are
three more window axes and instead of the cupolas, two cast zinc figures
emphasize the corners. The design of the central avant-corps with the
monumental windows is the same as on the front; the main entrance on the
ground floor has an additional window. Under the unknown gable figure,
the allegory of art instructs industry and applied arts, a cast zinc
relief by the sculptor August Kiß from 1862. The building inscription
ARTEM NON ODIT NISI IGNARUS (Only the ignorant despises art), again in
gilded copper letters, was chosen by Friedrich Wilhelm IV himself. The
somewhat strange saying, which also calls for the acquisition of
knowledge, leaves room for speculation in its negation. Is it just a
quote, an expression of a certain resignation or a hidden allusion to
the blessed father of the inscription on the main facade?
Design guidelines
The sparse exterior
decoration contrasts with the extraordinarily rich and significant
interior decoration. Stüler describes the guidelines for the decorative
design with "... it seemed appropriate to keep the rooms in the greatest
possible harmony with the objects to be displayed". The purpose of
museums is "to provide a clear and extensive overview of the artistic
practices of different peoples and times in addition to the enjoyment of
beautiful works of art" and since "[...] the arts are never isolated,
but always correct in connection with the sister arts are to be
appreciated, the architect believed it was his duty to supplement the
collections as much as possible in the attitude and decoration of the
locales, especially since in all good art epochs architecture was the
bearer of sculpture and painting.” A competition of decoration and of
the exhibits should be avoided, however, "e.g. E. the sculpture rooms
decorated only with paintings dealing with subjects other than the
sculptures, and for the latter a calm, isolating background was
arranged”. According to these principles, copies of architectural
details, murals and rich ornamental painting with references to the
respective collections created an ambience suitable to the exhibits. The
contemporary publication Berlin and its Art Treasures describes the
Neues Museum as a labyrinth of symbolism and a stone compendium of
cultural and art history due to the rich symbolism and the most diverse
relationships and connections.
The walls in the collection rooms
were divided into three parts; on the painted base at the height of the
pedestals and showcases followed a central wall area in strong colors
that contrasted with the exhibits. A Pompeian red in most of the
exhibition rooms, but also green and purple. The upper wall zone was
decorated with murals, the size of which was determined by architectural
dividing elements. They showed mythological themes such as the Nordic
gods in the Fatherland Hall, the Egyptian gods in the Mythological Hall
or heroes of ancient legends in the Niobid Hall. In the Egyptian Court,
in the Greek and in the Roman Hall, landscape paintings and
reconstructions of historical architecture relate to the collections.
Another type was the depiction of historical events, such as in the
southern cupola hall. A large number of decorative painters were
commissioned with the artistic design of the ceilings and walls,
including one of Stüler's closest associates (Minkels, p. 67, note 343)
Georg Sievers, the son-in-law of the well-known Berlin court carpenter
Karl Wanschaff.
In the compendium on the Mark Brandenburg and Berlin from 1881, Ernst
Friedel emphasizes in three lines the size, cleanliness, diverse
furnishings of the interior, Stüler's taste and decorative talent, in
order to introduce his detailed criticism as follows: "But that's the
merit of this building, while for the rest it provokes multiple
exhibitions.” In addition to minor points such as criticism of the
plastered building and, from his point of view, partially unsuccessful
compositions of the colossal pictures, Friedel places the lack of
consideration of the soon necessary extensions at the center of his
criticism.
The close connection between the exhibits and the
exhibition rooms actually proved to be a hindrance when moving out or
moving individual collections. This was the case for the first time in
the 1870s when the Kunstkammer and the ethnographic collection moved out
as a result of the opening of the Ethnological Museum. This was also the
main criticism of the architects, as expressed, for example, in the
handbook of architecture in 1893: "Stüler endeavored to adapt the
architectural design of the rooms to their purpose. Here and there,
however, the configuration of the same has proved to be an obstacle to
moving the individual collections, which became necessary as a result of
their increase.”
The criticism of the scientists was directed
against the romanticizing and exoticizing interior, as well as against
representations that were now scientifically outdated. Despite this, the
interiors were treated with great care, even when redesigned, with the
exception of the larger conversions for the presentation of the Amarna
finds in the 1920s. The Irish writer Samuel Beckett expressly excluded
the Armanahof in his criticism of the haywire in the museum. Beckett
noted in a diary entry on January 7, 1937: "Higgledypiggledy
presentation except in Amarnahof".
There were only 17 years between the start of construction of Schinkel's Old Museum and the start of construction of the New Museum. While Schinkel moves in the conventional solid and wooden construction methods and his building can therefore still be attributed to the 18th century in terms of technology, Stüler uses new technologies for the Neues Museum with iron constructions, light bricks and vaults made of pot bricks, which were made possible by industrialization in the further course of the 19th century were used more intensively. At this level, the terms Altes Museum – Neues Museum acquire a further meaning as an expression of old paths and new paths.
Inside, Stüler's museum is traversed by an actual iron skeleton, a
diverse and sophisticated system of iron supports, girders and beams.
The adjacent section through the north-east wing shows some examples.
Visible bowstring supports clad in sheet brass and cast zinc support the
flat-vaulted ceilings in the Niobid Hall, the Greek Hall and the halls
of the Prints and Drawings Cabinet. The illustration below shows the
different types of paneling and the standardized core shape of the
bowstring holders, which is the same in all halls. These consist of a
two piece cast iron bow and a pair of wrought iron strings carefully
forged from seven round bars "of the best Staffordshire iron" bundled
together into a single round bar and cut to 21⁄3 inches for the lesser
stress of the third story and up 3 inches rolled out for the second
floor. Large tensioning screws on the support of the bowstring holder
allow fine adjustment of the tension of the strings. This clever
combination of easily malleable cast iron with stronger wrought iron was
a technical innovation. Cast-iron beams were inserted into the cast-on
flanges, spanning the length of the halls and lined with light pot
bricks from Ernst March's pottery factory. In the Mythological Hall on
the ground floor, the same bowstring supports are hidden behind a
plastered wall, which simulate a solid construction - in the words of
Stüler "... [which] are given the appearance of stone beams by brickwork
and plaster". All iron components were supplied by August Borsig's
factory on Chausseestrasse. The factories of Simeon Pierre Devaranne and
Moritz Geiß supplied the cast zinc parts and presumably also the brass
cladding.
An iron structure destroyed in World War II was the
double glass roof over the Egyptian courtyard, but its structure was
hidden from visitors by a suspended frosted glass ceiling. Without
supports, it covered an area of approximately 380 m². The glass-covered
inner courtyard, the first of its kind in Berlin, was later included in
other museum buildings such as the former Kunstgewerbemuseum by Martin
Gropius, but can also be found in the department store architecture. The
slender iron columns, arches and beams in the rooms of the Kunstkammer
on the third floor of the south wing are another type of iron
construction in the Neues Museum. They can almost be regarded as a
dematerialized variant of the arch positions of the basements. Like the
bowstring supports in the north wing, sheet brass and cast zinc
decorations clad the core form of iron. Fascinating in form is the iron
construction covered with wire mesh, which was also destroyed and is
hidden behind the "Gothic" vault of the Star Hall. For Stüler, static
reasons were decisive for the choice of the solution, since the thin
walls of the third floor would not have withstood the pressure of a real
Gothic vault. In the vestibule, the coffering of the ceiling rests on
iron beams, "to which decorated bronze strips are attached underneath,
so that the metal construction also appears in the decoration".
Stüler's handling of the iron constructions is full of facets. Some of
them are deliberately not shown as such, walled in and covered up as in
the Mythological Hall, the Star Hall or the glass roof of the Egyptian
Court. They are partly - although hidden - made visible in the
decoration as in the vestibule and partly disguised as in the halls of
the north wing or in the Kunstkammer halls. The decorations clearly show
the function of the iron core in their forms, but here too it is not the
iron construction, but an image of the iron construction, often in the
formal language of antiquity, such as the strings disguised as "ropes"
and statically meaningless consoles of the bowstring holders in the
rooms of the north wing. The destruction of the Second World War has
uncovered and made visible parts of the originally hidden iron
constructions in some rooms, thus opening a window to the technically
innovative side of the building.
In addition to advantages such as the reduction in construction time
and costs through industrial production or the increased fire safety due
to the omission of wooden ceilings, there were factors that literally
forced Stüler to use iron constructions instead of conventional solid
construction. These were mainly the poor building ground, which required
the lowest possible weight of the museum and thus thin and light walls
and ceilings with little or no horizontal shear. A further complication
was the requirement to accommodate one storey more than in the Altes
Museum at about the same height. The architect chose the materials very
consciously, which can be seen in the roof of the large stairwell, which
was made of wood and not iron. His thoughts:
"In a building
which, according to its purpose, primarily has to make claims to fire
safety, it can be noticeable that the roof framework is made of wood.
The reasons for this were as follows: Iron roofs, on which the sheet
metal of the roof covering is placed without the intermediary of wooden
boarding, provide a roof that is too thin and too exposed to temperature
changes. Especially in heated buildings, the lower surfaces of the metal
fog up so extraordinarily in winter that the falling of drops becomes
very annoying and harmful. This diminishes as wood is used for the outer
deck. Since, however, since there is no need for a penetrating
entablature, the wood required for the roof framework is only small and
the arched construction is so strong that it cannot be damaged when the
roof burns down, doubts have been raised about the use of wood, which
offers advantages in other respects.
In relation to iron
construction, Stüler occupies an intermediate position between the
antipodes Gottfried Semper, who rejected construction with iron because
of the associated loss of mass, and the iron enthusiast Henri Labrouste,
who in the Sainte-Geneviève library, which was created around the same
time, and later in 1858 /1868 in the reading rooms in the old building
of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris shows the iron constructions
uncovered.
The factors of building material, industrial
production, design and construction process influenced each other. The
serial industrial production required a standardization of the
supporting elements to be manufactured, if they were to be manufactured
quickly and inexpensively. In the design, the standardized components
require rooms of the same dimensions, which should not, however, appear
monotonous. Production was shifted from the construction site to the
factory, which made it possible to speed up the construction process,
but also made greater demands on transport and logistics. At times,
Borsig encountered delivery difficulties due to the rapid pace of
construction, as can be seen from the correspondence preserved in the
construction files. Prior to mass production, a prototype was tested by
"exploiting, by means of a very powerful hydraulic press, one of the
anchors being ruptured with a force of 64,000 pounds per square inch of
its cross-section". Quality assurance was also new, with all tie rods
supplied by August Borsig being tested before leaving the factory. Thus,
as early as the 1840s, there is an example of the use of industrial
production in a building in Berlin, which is usually first associated
with Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace for the London World's Fair in 1851.
The following sections describe the rooms of the Neues Museum "at the
time of its opening in 1855" in the form of a tour. Most of the quotes
and images come from Stüler's The New Museum in Berlin: 24 panels. and
from Berlin and its art treasures. Some halls and facilities have since
been modified or were damaged or destroyed during World War II. Total
losses are the north-west wing with the Historical Hall, the Greek Hall,
the Blue Hall, the Apollo Hall and the Green Hall together with the
Egyptian Court, as well as the southern cupola hall with the transition
to the Old Museum. The interior decoration of the stairwell is also a
total loss, in particular the frescoes on the history of mankind. The
state of preservation of the other rooms varies between largely
preserved rooms such as the Niobidensaal to rooms reduced to their shell
state such as the Modern Hall.
vestibule and staircase
Through
the main entrance in the middle of the eastern façade, visitors entered
the main vestibule, whose coffered ceiling was supported by four Doric
columns in Carrara pavonazetto marble. The light marble with the strong,
dark violet veins contrasted well with the red-brown base and the
polished, yellowish walls made of the marble imitation marble. The
ceiling construction was a construction of iron beams, "to which
decorated bronze strips are attached underneath, in order to let the
metal construction also appear in the decoration" - Stüler apparently
wanted to show this iron construction at least indirectly. On the left a
door of polished rosewood led to the collection of Norse antiquities, on
the right to the Egyptian collection.
A wide single-flight
staircase made of gray Silesian Groß-Kunzendorfer marble with the same
design of the side walls as in the vestibule led to the first floor
through the large staircase hall, which was already visible when
entering the main vestibule. At 38 meters long, 15.70 meters wide and
20.20 meters high, it reached through the entire depth of the building
and through the two floors, making it the largest room. The size, the
extensive wall surfaces on the long walls and the good lighting through
the windows on the two narrow sides determined it for the installation
of large sculptures and reliefs. In the design of the staircase, Stüler
followed a well-known design by his teacher Karl Friedrich Schinkel for
a royal palace on the Acropolis for King Otto I from 1834: "The ceiling
was made according to Schinkel's beautiful design for the large hall of
the royal palace on the Acropolis in Athens, in which the architect
could not refrain from donating a souvenir to his dearly revered master,
whose most beautiful designs unfortunately did not come to life.”
On the landing stood two monumental 5.50 meter high casts of the
horse tamers Castor and Pollux from the Piazza di Monte Cavallo in front
of the Quirinale Palace in Rome. From this landing, two flights of
stairs, interrupted by intermediate landings, led to the second floor on
the two long walls. The two flights of stairs joined after a quarter
landing before exiting under a copy of the Korenhalle of the Erechtheum
in Athens. The door frame below the Korenhalle was also an architectural
reference to the Erechtheion. Stüler had commissioned the sculptor
Gustav Blaeser, who had also worked on the facade, with the plastic
design of the banister. On the opposite transverse wall, four Ionic
columns supported a transverse gallery that connected the opposite doors
of the second floor.
The first and second floors were separated
by a wall architrave, which formed the base for the wall paintings on
the upper floor. In Stüler's original design, the walls were simply
divided by Corinthian pilasters. Friedrich Wilhelm IV personally
designated the walls of the second floor for large-scale fresco
paintings with the intention of “[...] also giving the modern monumental
art a field of development, whereby it proves to be on a par with the
antique, and promoted joy in the artist in the commission he took on to
depict the main epochs of world history in 6 large paintings.” The
artist was the then well-known Munich court painter Wilhelm von
Kaulbach, who was recruited from Munich specifically to paint the
frescoes. Friedrich Wilhelm IV exerted a great deal of influence on the
design of the murals. The General Director of the Royal Museums, Ignaz
von Olfers, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Alexander von
Humboldt and other intellectual greats of the time acted in an advisory
capacity. In analogy to the six days of creation, six turning points in
world history should be presented. The cycle is influenced by the
Hegelian philosophy of history of higher human development, upward
development through permanent selection, emancipation from external
religious powers. A tough struggle arose between the king and the artist
over the themes to be depicted, which in some cases lasted for years.
Kaulbach's cycle with the frescoes The Tower of Babylon, Homer and the
Greeks or the Flowering of Greece, The Destruction of Jerusalem, The
Battle of the Huns, The Crusaders before Jerusalem and The Age of
Reformation ran through the entire upper floor of the monumental
staircase and was around 75 meters long. The width of each fresco was
about 7.50 meters, the height 6.70 meters. The pictures were executed by
Kaulbach from 1847 to 1866 in stereochromy. With this technique, the
pictures can be painted as if with oil and are subsequently firmly
attached to the masonry with water glass, resulting in a fresco effect.
The paintings in the Neues Museum were the first large-scale application
of the technique that had just been invented. During construction,
precautions were taken to ensure that the wall surfaces dried out
quickly and that the frescoes could be applied quickly. Actual air
channels were created in the masonry by raising every second layer of
bricks inside the wall and by creating irregular openings.
To
separate the main images, Stüler had the images above the doors and
between the frescoes painted on a gold background. The paintings above
the doors showed an allegory of legend, digging into the past with a
rune staff in the ground while the ravens Hugin and Munin circled her
head, Clio as the muse of history, inscribing the history of the peoples
on a tablet, the allegory of art and the allegory of science. The
intermediate images on a gold background between the frescoes
represented the great legislators as seated figures, above which
floating figures characterized the countries of their work. The couples
are Solon with Venus embodying Greece surrounded by erotes, Moses with
the Tablets of the Law, setting foot on the shattered Golden Calf, and
Isis embodying Egypt, Charlemagne and Italy, and Frederick II and
Germania, embodying Germany . The rest of the wall structure system was
grisaille painting in a reserved green-grey, the upper end was formed by
a frieze of putti and children with parodies of Egyptian, Greek and
Roman historical events. The narrow sides to the left and right of the
windows were decorated with allegories of architecture, sculpture,
painting and graphic art. The color of the unpainted walls was a deep
Pompeian red with a mild sheen.
The gently sloping coffered
ceiling was painted with arabesques on a deep red background and was
supported by an open purlin roof with six mighty trusses. The actual
roof was not visible from the inside and was about 2.50 meters higher.
The binders were decorated with gilded panthers, fallow deer,
hippogryphs, lions, bulls and griffins as well as cast zinc ornaments,
which Stüler had taken directly from Schinkel's design for the royal
palace.
The Egyptian Collection, the Collection of Patriotic Antiquities and the Ethnographic Collection were housed on the ground floor. The architectural character was "adapted as far as possible to the simple schemes of the objects to be set up". Thus, historically older constructions such as beams resting on wall supports or pillars, Egyptian and Doric columns support the ceilings, while Ionic columns were predominantly used on the first floor and Corinthian columns on the upper floor. This hierarchy of column shapes corresponded to one of the materials used: the ground floor columns were hewn from sandstone and faced with stucco, the elegant first floor columns were of Italian, French and Bohemian marble, and the second floor columns were cast iron clad in gilded cast zinc. Precious and resilient natural stone covered the floor of the vestibule, in most of the exhibition rooms the floor was made of colored terrazzo.
The Egyptian department comprised the entire north wing around the
Egyptian courtyard with five rooms on the ground floor. Richard Lepsius,
the leading Egyptologist of his time, was consulted for the design of
the Egyptian courtyard and the halls of the Egyptian department. Between
1842 and 1845, Lepsius led the expedition to Egypt sent by Friedrich
Wilhelm IV, whose rich collection was to be housed and exhibited in the
newly created rooms. Stüler's claim was great: "Even during the
collection of the monuments brought back by the Egyptian expedition, the
main aspect was kept in mind to form a historical museum which, in
contrast to the previous collections of antiquities, which had been
accumulated accidentally and depending on the occasion, all essential
aspects and artistic epochs of Egyptian antiquity should be presented as
evenly as possible through characteristic samples. The same purpose
prevailed in the furnishing and decoration of the rooms intended for the
installation.”[8] The executed paintings and decorations documented the
current state of Egyptology at the time and no longer had anything in
common with the romantic Egyptian fashion in the wake of Napoleon's
Egyptian expedition.
A small anteroom led from the main vestibule
to the heart of the Egyptian section, the Egyptian courtyard, covered by
a double glass roof. In terms of architecture, it was a copy of the
columned courtyard of the Ramesseum in West Thebes, reduced to a third.
The peristyle of 16 columns with lotus capitals supporting a gallery
enclosed the rectangular space. On the cornice above the pillars was the
following dedicatory inscription in hieroglyphs for the expert:
"The Royal Sonnenaar, the avenger of Prussia, the king, the son of the
sun, Friedrich Wilhelm IV., Philopator [Greek for "the father-loving
one"], Euergetes [Greek for "benefactors"], Eucharistos [Greek for "the
well-pleasing one"] , loved by Thoth and Safech, the victorious lord of
the Rhine and the Vistula, who was chosen by Germania, has erected in
this building colossi, statues, images and sculptures, stones, pillars
and coffins, and many other good things brought out of Egypt and the
land of the Moors."
The back walls of the peristyle were
decorated with views of landscapes and reconstructed monuments of Egypt.
Seen clockwise from the courtyard entrance these were The Pyramids of
Memphis or Gizeh, Hathor Temple and Typhonium at Dendera by Carl Graeb,
The Ramesseum in Thebes, The Memnon Statues at Thebes by Wilhelm
Schirmer, Hypostyle or Columned Hall at Karnak, The Temple at Karnak by
Eduard Pape, The Temple of Gerf Hussein by Wilhelm Schirmer, The Rock
Tombs of Beni Hasan by Carl Graeb, The Quarries of Silfilis by Eduard
Biermann, The Obelisks in the Small Temple Courtyard at Karnak by Eduard
Biermann, Forecourt of the Temple at Edfu by Eduard Biermann, The Island
of Philae by Eduard Biermann, The Rock Temple of Abu Simbel by Max
Schmidt, Mount Barkal by Max Schmidt and The Pyramids of Meroe by Max
Schmidt.
The gallery and its back walls were used to display
casts from Egypt, casts of Assyrian art from Khorsabad and Nimrud, and
Persian from Persepolis and Pasargadae. The gallery was accessible via
the large staircase on the first floor through a door under the
staircase that led to the second floor.
In the hypostyle
adjoining the courtyard, eight columns painted with hieroglyphs
supported the blue ceiling decorated with yellow stars. The door on the
right led into the Historical Hall, the walls of which were adorned with
a selection of the most remarkable historical representations in colored
copies, as faithful as possible, of the Egyptian originals. Among them
were depictions of the private life of the pharaohs, battle and hunting
scenes and religious ceremonies as copies of paintings from the temples
of Medinet Habu and Karnak, from tombs and from papyri. The cartouches
of all the pharaohs formed a frieze above the wall paintings. Twelve
pillars supported the ceiling, which was decorated with repeating
vultures, copying the ceiling paintings from the tomb of Psammetichus.
Embalmed animals, small and large statues of gods made of ore and stone,
jewellery, clothing and everyday objects were displayed in glass cases
and open cupboards. The door on the left led to the burial hall, so
named after three integrated original burial chambers. In the adjoining
column-free Mythological Hall, the ceiling rested on the longitudinal
walls, supported by eight wall pillars, iron beams and trusses built
into the wall. The lower half of the walls was covered with painted,
yellowish wood paneling, above which a band of about the same width
showed the main gods of Egyptian mythology as copies of Egyptian
paintings. A narrower band, about a third as high, with depictions of
the cult of the dead, such as the judgment of the dead of Osiris,
stretched in the uppermost wall zone over the supporting beams with the
iron trusses built into them. The ceiling showed astronomical
representations in gold on a deep blue background, for example the gods
of the month or the zodiac from the temple of Dendera. Numerous mummies
and sarcophagi were displayed alongside funerary objects in this last
room of the Egyptian section.
From the main vestibule, through the door labeled Nordic Antiquities, you entered the Patriotic Hall, sometimes also called the Hall of Nordic Antiquities. This collection of prehistoric and Bronze Age finds is the nucleus of today's Museum of Prehistory and Early History. The ceiling rested with belt arches on six sandstone columns, whose Doric fluting and capitals were sculpted in white marmorino. The finds were displayed in oak cabinets between the columns. The basic color of the walls was a violet gray. The paintings came from the Nordic sagas of the Edda, executed by the painters Gustav Richter, Robert Müller and Gustav Heidenreich. On the long wall towards the inside of the museum, on the left of the first painting, Odin, the king of the gods of light, appeared on his throne in the castle of the gods Asgard with the two ravens Hugin and Munin and the earth mother Hertha on her chariot, between them the goddess of the night Nótt, circling the sky on horseback with her son Dag. The next fresco represented Baldur and his death by the cunning of Loki. This was followed by a representation of the spring god Freyr and his sister Freya and, as the last painting, Tyr, the god of battle, and the journey to Valhalla. On the long wall towards the outside, in the first picture Thor was to be seen setting out on his chariot drawn by two ibexes to fight the mountain trolls, opposite him elves in the moonlight, offering flowers and wreaths to their queen Titania. On the next fresco followed a representation of the fights of the giants against the dragons, opposite the mermaids in merry play with the beasts. The third picture represented the three Norns, the first watering the root of the world ash tree Yggdrasil, the second spinning the thread of life, and the third sitting by the stream of times, drawing the deeds of the past on a shield. In In the passageway to the south vestibule there were two more murals by Ferdinand Konrad Bellermann, Arkona on Rügen with the dolmens and Stubbenkammer with a sacrificial ring.
The ethnological exhibits were on display in the adjoining three
halls of the ethnographic department, the flat-domed hall with the
eponymous flat dome vaults made of clay pots and the niche-like closure,
the side hall for smaller objects and the ethnographic hall with the
Doric columns. Due to the chronological and regional inhomogeneity,
Stüler limited the multicolored decoration to the ceilings in these
rooms, the walls were kept in one color in light wax colors. The essay
"The New Museum in Berlin" in the journal for construction in 1853
describes the installation at that time. The art of the completely
barbaric peoples according to the understanding of the time, such as
that offered by Africa and Oceania, and the more significant objects,
such as those provided by Polynesia and India, were exhibited in the
flat-domed hall and in the hall for smaller objects. The things from
China, Japan and Mexico, in which partly a very special industriousness
in the treatment of the material is expressed, partly also the hint of a
more ingenious conception appears, found their place in the main room of
the collection, the ethnographic room and in the adjoining room behind
the stairs.
The halls of the Nordic and Ethnographic departments
occupied the southern courtyard of the museum, named Greek courtyard
after the heads of the Greek gods Zeus, Hera and Athena on the outside
wall of the stairwell. The 1.50 meter high relief frieze The Destruction
of Pompeii by Hermann Schievelbein was attached between the second and
third floors. At the level of the first floor, a 1.70 meter projecting
canopy surrounded the courtyard on three sides to protect it from the
weather, in order to enable the display of early Christian and medieval
architectural fragments. An artistic paving and the installation of an
old fountain by Pankraz Labenwolf should create the atmosphere of a
medieval monastery courtyard in analogy to the Egyptian courtyard. The
courtyard was accessible by a double flight of stairs from the central
stairwell. On the northern narrow side, an apse protruded into the
courtyard.
The entire first floor was "designated for the installation of as complete a collection as possible of gypsum casts based on antiquity and the best works of the Middle Ages and subsequent times, so that an overview of the history of sculpture in its best products is given in the same way". Stüler writes in his publication on the Neues Museum. On the one hand, the location on the upper floor made it possible to connect via the connecting corridor to the sculpture gallery in the Altes Museum, which contained only originals made of marble and ore. On the other hand, the elevated position in the piano nobile above the works of art in the basement, which according to the understanding of the time were more primitive, illustrates the importance as the actual center of all collections. For the presentation of the casts, Stüler designed a sequence of exhibition rooms with a wide variety of basic shapes and alternating side and top lighting. The colourful, decorative mosaic floors were painstakingly laid with stoneware tiles from Ernst March's factory, combined with colored gypsum screed or natural stone.
The Greek Hall stretched across the entire north-west wing of the first floor. Its ceiling, a painted velarium in pale yellow, was supported by seven iron bowstring supports, clad in gilded cast zinc and brass figures. The lower part of the walls were painted and polished in Pompeian red, above ten landscape paintings by Stüler showed reconstructions of Greek architecture in Greece, Sicily and Asia Minor (Athens with the Acropolis by Carl Graeb, the Acropolis by Eduard Pape, the Zeus statue of Phidias in the temple at Olympia by Eduard Pape, The Monument to Lysicrates in Athens by Eduard Pape, The Temple of Zeus Panhellenios at Aegina by Wilhelm Schirmer, The Sacred Grove at Olympia by Carl Graeb, The Phigalia with the Temple of Apollo Epicurios by Wilhelm Schirmer, The Theater of Syracuse by Karl Eduard Biermann, Lycian tombs by Max Schmidt and Hain and Altar of Zeus Lykaios in Arcadia by Max Schmidt). The landscape paintings with the intact, reconstructed architecture were in conscious contrast to the mostly mutilated statues and should "[...] hover like a colored halo of transfiguration over the remains of the rubble [...], the casts of which are housed in this hall". The highlights among the plaster casts of Greek sculpture on display were the pediment of the temple at Aegina (original in the Glyptothek in Munich) and the Parthenon frieze (original in the British Museum). Stüler originally planned the installation of the Parthenon frieze in the gallery of the Egyptian court. However, these wall surfaces were then used for the Egyptian and Assyrian sculptures. Therefore, the Greek Hall had to be divided by low transverse walls. The well-known architectural theorist and art historian Karl Bötticher reconstructed the east pediment of the Aegina temple "in the original colors". Stüler refers here to the polychromy dispute of the time and appears to be well informed and interested in the issues that were current at the time. As in the rooms of the Egyptian Collection, the change from romantic enthusiasm and transfiguration to scientific methodology is evident.
Through the Laocoon Cabinet, also designed with the help of Karl Bötticher in the ancient purple tone where a cast of the famous Laocoon group was placed, one arrives at the Apollo Hall. The rectangular hall received side and skylight from a bay-like porch on the north wall with two small niches to the left and right of the window, which, like the larger niches in the middle of the long walls, were used for the installation of famous statues such as Endymion of Stockholm, Diane of Versailles or of Apollo from the Belvedere. The actual room with its barrel ceiling modeled on the Baths in Pompeii was dominated by a cast of the Farnese bull. A few steps led through a door on the wall opposite the window to the gallery of the Egyptian courtyard. The color concept with violet walls and a predominantly white ceiling with light Pompeian paintings resembled that of the Laocoön cabinet.
The following octagonal north-domed hall, more than forty feet high, occupied the north-west corner of the building and was lit only by a skylight. Four round alternated with four square niches. Two of them connected as doors to the Apollo Hall and the Niobid Hall. Statues were erected in the rest. The walls were made of green porphyry. In the semi-circular fields above the square niches and doors, heroic images showed the deeds of Greek heroes (Hercules defeats the gold-crowned Kerynea hind, Bellerophon on Pegasus kills the Chimera, Perseus frees Andromeda and Theseus kills the Minotaur) designed by the painters Eduard Daege, August Ferdinand Hopfgarten, Eduard Steinbrück and Adolf Schmidt, executed by Eltester and Heinrich Bögel (ca. 1828–1856). In the coffers of the dome, 16 genii were shown playing with animals sacred to the gods and attributes of the gods, executed by Eduard Daege, August Ferdinand Hopfgarten, Eduard Steinbrück and Adolf Schmidt. The North Cupola Hall now houses the bust of Nefertiti.
Visitors enter the adjoining Niobid Hall through a portal framed by the casts of two caryatids based on originals from the Villa Albani. Above the door is written in gold letters on a black background "PROMETHEUS CREATED EVERY ART FOR MORTAL PEOPLE" - a quote from Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound. The similarly designed portal on the opposite wall to the Bacchus Hall is inscribed with “MUCH AMAZING THINGS RULE AND YET NOTHING MORE AMAZING THAN MAN” – a quote from Sophocles' Antigone. Stüler designed the hall very similarly to the Greek hall – walls in Pompeian red, the ceiling in somewhat darker yellow decorative paintings with painted terracotta reliefs and ten bowstring supports decorated with gilded cast zinc parts. In the upper wall zones, 21 murals in square, octagonal or round gilded frames told ancient legends (Orpheus in the Underworld, executed by Wilhelm Peters according to the design of Bonaventura Genelli, Cadmus kills the dragon by Karl Becker, Hypsipyle finds Opheltes killed by a snake /Archemorus by Karl Becker, Mercury puts Argus to sleep by Karl Becker, Blind Oedipus, expelled from Thebes, is led by his daughter Antigone by August Theodor Kaselowsky, Pelops and Hippodamia after winning the chariot race by August Theodor Kaselowsky, Tantalus and Sisyphus in Hades by August Theodor Kaselowsky, Jason and Medea with the Golden Fleece and the slain dragon by August Theodor Kaselowsky, Diana saves Iphigenia from the sacrifice of Adolf Henning, Achilles receives new armor from Thetis at the corpse of Patroclus by Adolf Henning, Odysseus rescued by the veil of Leukothea by Adolf Henning, Aeneas flees with Anchises and Ascanius from the burning Troy by Adolf Henning, Daedalus makes the wings for Icarus executed by Wilhelm Peters after the design by Bonaventura Genelli, Prometheus on the rock executed by Wilhelm Peters after the design by Bonaventura Genelli, Romulus plowing by Adolf Henning, Der Wrath of Ajax by Adolf Henning, Meleager hands Atalante the head of the Calydonian Boar by August Theodor Kaselowsky, Peleus abducts Thetis by August Theodor Kaselowsky, Hyllos, son of Hercules, brings his mother the head of Eurystheus by Karl Becker, Cecrops prays the statue of Athene an von Karl Becker, The Education of Achilles by Chiron executed by Wilhelm Peters after the draft by Bonaventura Genelli). The border arabesques in grisaille were also executed by Wilhelm Peters. The hall got its name from the sculptural group of Niobe set up here, casts from the transition from Greek to Roman art were also exhibited here.
The following Bacchus Hall was again in the central building of the museum's central building under the staircase and the connecting corridor between the halls of the third floor. The hall consisted of a higher part, with a flat ceiling, where the windows were, and a lower part, where three barrel vaults supported the staircase on columns of purple-brown Pyrenean marble. The vaults were painted in the Pompeian style with vine leaves twining around a bronze trellis. The walls in a dark, saturated violet gave the rather small room an intimate character, and matching domestic utensils and objects of daily use from antiquity as well as casts of antique small art were presented there.
In the Roman Hall, so named after the casts of Roman sculptures exhibited here, the ceiling was not supported by an iron structure as in the previous ones, but by three arches on columns made of brown Bohemian limestone with Ionic capitals, which at the same time divided the space into four sections. In the longitudinal wall towards the Greek courtyard, a niche was let into each section, which, together with the space created by the brick-fronted heating panelling, was used to set up smaller exhibits. The ceiling with colorful coffered panels, divided with gold strips, showed in the middle three city coats of arms based on Greco-Roman city coins. The painter Eduard Pape painted the 17 prospects of Roman cities and landscapes with reconstructions of Roman architecture in the upper wall zone (The Roman Forum, The Trajan Forum, The Roman Imperial Palaces with the Circus Maximus, Trajan's Villa Tiburtina, The Baths of Caracalla, The Temple in Praeneste, the forum in Pompeii, the Tiber Island in Rome, the tombs in Pompeii, the triumphal procession through the Arch of Constantine, the Porta Nigra in Trier, the courtyard of the Casa delle fontana in Pompeii, the stibadium in Pliny's Tuscum, the tomb of the Plautier family near Tivoli , Interior of Scipios Tomb near Rome, Columbarium of Livia Augusta in Rome and The Temple of Isis in Pompeii). The dark green walls were decorated with strip-like gold lines, the fluting of the columns was provided with similar gold lines. The pillars of the portals, decorated with mosaics, bore an image of Poseidon and his entourage in the architrave on the side facing the Bacchus Hall, executed by Eduard Pape and Carl Friedrich Seiffert.
The southern cupola hall was lit by the skylight in the cupola and from the connecting corridor to the Old Museum, to which a staircase with eleven steps led. Due to this connection, the south-domed hall also had the function of a vestibule for visitors from the Altes Museum, which was reflected in the elaborate design. The dome was filled with a red velarium decorated with gold stars, in the pendentives medallions bore the cardinal virtues with the allegories of the four capitals of Christian antiquity and the early Middle Ages, Rome, Jerusalem, Byzantium and Aachen, painted by Eduard Daege. The walls were kept in a simple, light brown. In the upper zones, large-format history paintings showed the transition from antiquity to the Christian Middle Ages. In the conche facing the Roman Hall, a portrait of Emperor Augustus embodied antiquity. In the arc above the portal to the connecting passage to the Old Museum, i.e. in the visitor’s direction of vision, The Recognition of Christianity by Constantine by Hermann Stilke marked the turn from pagan antiquity to Christian late antiquity. Religion was enthroned in the ceiling painting at the apex of the vault, awakening and enlivening sacred art, accompanied by two other paintings with patrons of the Christian faith and Christian art: Theodosius welcomes the Goth prince Athanaric in Constantinople and Theodoric receives the envoys of different peoples in Ravenna, who pay homage to his greatness. Still in the Byzantine/Late Antiquity theme, the large intervening mural on the outer wall showed The inauguration of the Sophienkirche in Constantinople by Emperor Justinian in 549 by the painter Julius Schrader - again with scientific claims in the depiction of Hagia Sofia, "for which the more recent photographs of this model used by the Greek churches". The cycle ended on the opposite wall with the reconciliation of the Saxon Duke Wittekind with Charlemagne, executed by Gustav Graef based on the cartoon by Wilhelm von Kaulbach, the painter of the frescoes in the large staircase. This last painting symbolized the beginning of the Christian German Empire, but in the eyes of the contemporaries, like the allegories of the Christian capitals, probably satisfied the legitimacy claims of the developing German nation.
Stüler designed the Medieval Hall, or hall for works of art from the Middle Ages, in the shape of a three-aisled basilica with an apse. Four dark marble columns supported the ceiling, dividing it into nine flat domes. The painters Eduard Holbein, Schütz and Karl Stürmer executed the portraits of the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire from Heinrich I to Maximilian I on a gold background in the center of the domes. Allegories of German cities were placed in the pendentives, representing medieval buildings that were associated with the reign of the respective emperor. "In each of the nine domes is the portrait of one of the German emperors, under whom the practice of the arts flourished, surrounded by representations of those people and the names of the cities which history and the monuments that have come down to us indicate as particularly active in this direction .” Henry IV was surrounded by Worms, Speyer, Trier and Corvey, for example. The apse with five niches, illuminated by a skylight, closed off the space from the Greek courtyard. In this quiet chapel after the rushing bacchanalia of pagan polytheism, the casts of medieval works of art were displayed, as well as in the adjoining Bernward room with the ceiling painting Saint Bernward pours the Bernward column at the south-west corner of the museum.
The Modern Hall formed the conclusion of the plaster collection and was dedicated to sculptures from the Renaissance to the early 19th century. Six arches, each with two columns of violet-brownish marble with Ionic capitals, supported the ceiling and divided the space into seven smaller compartments, further separated by partitions between the columns. As in the Greek Hall, the large number of exhibits required more hanging space, while at the same time allowing a "stricter separation of the works of art according to schools and epochs". On the inner wall facing the Greek court, there was a niche for each compartment with wall paintings above it. The main and partition walls were tinted yellowish-brown, the base area violet-grey. The paintings in the upper wall area were kept in stone gray tones, the blue background of the figures on the left and right of the niches formed a color accent. Straps in arabesque paintings between the opposite columns structured the ceiling and in the crests of the central aisle seven octagonal wall paintings described the development of industry and the arts in allegories of agriculture, coinage, fine arts, architecture, gold and ironwork as well as of mechanical engineering. The openwork mantles of the water-heating stoves and the adjoining, 90-centimetre-high wall tables that covered the heating tubes were used to display larger and smaller sculptures. A cast of the Gate of Paradise in the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence, by Lorenzo Ghiberti, was embedded on the southern wall.
The third floor was shared by the Kupferstichkabinett and the Kunstkammer, in addition to a few adjoining rooms for the museum servants and the management. For good light conditions, the rooms should be as high as possible, which was limited by "the consideration not to raise the new museum conspicuously above the existing one and not to narrow the rooms, which are not very deep anyway, with arch supports". Stüler solved this challenge by using iron constructions for the ceilings on the third floor without exception, which "although constructed according to the line of the vaulted ceiling, did not exert any thrust on the enclosing walls, but were only allowed to support the vaulted constructions and at the same time close the walls anchor". He improved the lighting by giving the rooms additional windows facing the air space of the Greek and Egyptian courtyards, i.e. from two sides. The lower room height compared to the other floors did not allow large-scale mural cycles, which were created there in the upper wall zones. The floors were made of oak parquet, a rather soft and sensitive material. This was justified by the much lighter exhibits and the smaller flow of visitors in these special collections, in contrast to the exhibits in the collections on the lower floors, some of which weighed tons.
In the north wing around the air space of the Egyptian court were the
rooms of the Kupferstichkabinett, which also included a collection of
hand drawings by famous masters.
In the long Red Hall, which is
open to all visitors and so named after the color of the walls, ten
flat-arched iron trusses supported the simply painted ceiling. The
artistic covering of the iron trusses with gilded figures and cast zinc
arabesques was less elaborate than in the Niobid Hall below. Above the
windows, medallions depicted "Celebrities of the graver and the crayon".
A bust of Albrecht Dürer stood in a niche in the north wall of the hall.
In the adjoining Green Room or Room of Hand Drawings, so named for
the light green coloring of its walls, the collection of hand drawings,
which comprised around 30,000 sheets at the time the museum opened, was
kept. The showpiece of the interior was the flat-vaulted ceiling, which
was divided by four painted belt arches “in the color of burnt clay” and
gilded cast zinc strips. A group of wreath-bearing children danced
around a strong dark blue field in the middle. Four raised medallions
showed the famous engravers and draftsmen Rembrandt van Rijn, Anthonis
van Dyck, Lucas van Leyden and Hans Holbein the Younger. In the front
and back panels of the ceiling, the two rectangular paintings depict The
Invention of Painting and The Industry of Copperplate Printing, the
spaces between them being filled with scenes of smaller figures,
allegories, ornaments, and arabesques in bright colors.
Again,
eight bowstring bearers carried the simply painted ceiling in the Blue
Hall, which "[...]gains an extremely delicate, light and airy appearance
through its gentle light blue, which fills our soul with cheerful
comfort". The study collection of the Kupferstichkabinett was housed in
this room, which “is only opened to one or more trusted persons on
special request”. At the time of opening, the number of sheets from the
collection of engravings was half a million. The exhibition concept at
that time in the words of Stüler:
"In all these rooms, the walls
and glass cabinets are used to display the most important of the
collection, so that the history of copper engraving and woodcutting is
presented to even the passing visitor in the best products and for
further pursuit and enjoyment, which in the very rich collection finds
the most complete satisfaction. Pictures belonging more to the field of
hand drawings adorn the walls, smaller ones are arranged on movable
screens.”
The rooms of the Kunstkammer, a collection of "historical curiosities
and works of the art industry of the Middle Ages and of more recent
times, magnificent ivory works and carvings in wood, rarities in glass,
porcelain, etc.", were grouped around the air space of the Greek Court
in the south wing .
The massive marble columns and arches of the
lower floors were replaced by light, space-saving iron constructions.
The filigree decorations were not made of cast iron, "since experience
has shown that finer ornaments on such large construction parts come out
of the [iron] cast very impurely and imperfectly." use this art form to
disguise a very modern-looking iron core shape.
"Despite the
cladding, the dimensions of the thicknesses in all architectural and
ornamental forms were very modest, and all this metal architecture could
be gilded without giving the impression of overloaded splendor. This
impression was softened by simple stencil painting in brown tones in
suitable places, and the character of a fine and careful execution, such
as is peculiar to the metalwork of antiquity and the sixteenth century,
was still more impressed on the whole.
Simple stencil paintings
decorated the flat-vaulted ceilings in the Eastern Kunstkammer Hall and
in the Western Kunstkammer Hall, the walls were red in all the halls,
but overall the halls show nothing worth mentioning in their colorful
decoration.”
The majolica hall, located between the western and
eastern Kunstkammer Hall, had six flat domes on its iron construction,
similar to the flat-domed hall on the ground floor. The cupolas were
"decorated in a richer attitude", motivated by the purpose of the room
for displaying the rich collection of majolica and enamels. Stüler had
specially designed glass cabinets that were 2.9 meters high and 3.1
meters wide.
At the south-west corner of the building was the
Star Hall or Gothic Hall, a polygonal room for storing ecclesiastical
implements. Under the "Gothic" vault that covered the room, another iron
construction was hidden - the vault pressure of a real vault could not
have withstood the thin, light walls on the third floor. Bolted angles
connected the simple flat iron to form a ribbed structure. Between them
stretched a lattice made of fine wire mesh, which was plastered and
painted. Stüler used the irregular shape of the room and the ceiling to
conceal the oblique floor plan of the museum.
Museum check with Markus Brock: Neues Museum, Berlin. 30 min. First aired: June 7, 2015.