By Ty Malcolm
Last weekend, I made a quick jaunt to Berlin! It's a city filled with historical and cultural museums, and I managed to see quite a few while I was there. Here are some of my favorites:
DDR Museum
The Museum of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik , or communist East Germany, is a colorful collection of objects and interactive games showing life on the other side of the wall. This museum certainly packs a lot into a small space! There are endless drawers, panels, and levers to pull, turn, and flip to learn more about the section you're in. They've even squeezed an old car and a full-size model of an East German apartment. While you're there, try to manage a communist economy, watch a propaganda film, or type a letter on an old East German typewriter. But don't renounce capitalism and fall in love with the glory of socialism so fast - as soon as you walk outside, the bustling shops along the Spree will remind you which side won. Descriptions in German and English.
Stasi Museum
The Stasi Museum is a good follow-up to the DDR Museum, because it's the museum for the East German secret police (Staatssicherheit), located in their HQ building located far from the city center. I almost walked past the museum, because its old socialist architecture matched most of the buildings in the area. A warning: this museum won't help your love for the DDR. It details the overarching power of the Stasi - the informants, the home break-ins, the arrests, the executions. The exhibitions are even more interesting because many of the rooms in the building are largely unchanged from when they were in use. Although it is the farthest-removed museum on the list, I still think it's worth seeing! Descriptions in German and English.
Dali Museum
This is the one-stop shop for your favorite Surrealist painter! The multi-story Dali Museum on Potsdamerplatz contains over 400 paintings, etchings, sculptures, and films from Salvadore Dali. Most impressive are his interpretations of Dante's Inferno and Don Quixote, each of which span ten or twenty paintings. Stretching across entire walls of the museum, the individual paintings come together and tell the legends and fables of an earlier time. Beyond pure painting and sketching, the museum gives great insight into Dali's more unique methodologies, such as using muskets, grenades, and steamrollers to create art. If you'd like to get off of your feet, at least 3 surrealist short films are playing on loop in the first-floor theater. Although this was the most expensive museum I went to (€12 even after the student discount) it was still one of my favorites, and I would really recommend it. Descriptions in Spanish, German, and sometimes English.
Topography of Terror
The Topography of Terror exhibition is a government-funded museum built on top of the former HQ of the Nazi secret police in Berlin. This exhibition lays it all out - the Nazi rise to power, the anti-Jewish rhetoric, the deportations and horrific killings, and finally the Nuremberg Trials punishing the perpetrators. Unlike some of the other museums on this list, it is meant just as much for Germans as it is for tourists - the German government is very serious about educating people about the danger of fascism and anti-Semitism. Be sure to walk outside and around the excavated Nazi detention center - the exhibit isn't only indoors! Descriptions in German and English.
Jewish Museum
As a great complement to the Topography of Terror exhibition is the Jewish Museum of Berlin - it's one of the largest museums of Jewish culture, art, and history in all of Europe. Although it is one of the most popular museums in Berlin, it is open from 10am to 10pm, saving it from the endless lines that stretch from other museums I've visited in Paris and Vienna. There are several interesting exhibitions there currently: a comprehensive history of Judaism in Europe from the Middle Ages to the present day; a heartwarming collection of paintings called "A Muslim, a Christian, and a Jew"; and a basement substructure consisting of several long, stark hallways with artifacts from the Holocaust. Stairs leading to nowhere, and so-called "voided spaces" running the entire height of the building remind visitors of the many lives cut short by the horrors of the Holocaust. At the end of one hallway is the "Fallen Leaves" exhibit, with thousands of faces punched out of steel piled on the floor. At the end of another, the Holocaust Tower - a huge, hollow, concrete tower with no lighting open only to the cold sky. Visiting after dark, alone inside this chamber, I was struck by how absolute the darkness was after the doors shut behind me. I think this museum did an amazing job weaving together the highs and lows of the Jewish culture and history into a coherent story, and I really recommend it. Descriptions in Hebrew, German, and English.