Deutsches Historisches Museum

Although the largest part of its permanent exhibition is closed for renovation, the Deutsches Historisches Museum remains among the favorite places for most visitors who want to visit a museum. The museum’s temporary exhibitions can be seen in the Pei building. The exhibition hall of I.M. Pei, called Pei building can be reached by passing through the inner courtyard of the 300-year-old Zeughaus.

Zeughaus is the most important extant Baroque building in Berlin and the oldest building on Unter den Linden. Four architects were responsible for developing the Zeughaus from 1695 until its final utilisation in 1729: Johann Arnold Nering (1659-1695), Martin Grünberg (1655-1706), Andreas Schlüter (1659-1714) and Jean de Bodt (1670-1745). The Zeughaus owes it special place in art history not least of all to the outstanding quality of its sculptural works. The most famous ones are the 22 keystones that Andreas Schlüter created as masks of the giants for the inner courtyard.

The Transparency, light and movement of the Pei building are the architectonic elements that shape this urban masterpiece with its impressive perspectives and spatial interconnections. By constructing sight lines from one building to the other, I.M. Pei has created an architectonic correspondence between past and present.

The temporary exhibitions showcased in the Pei building are devoted to formative historical events, epochs and social developments. Six different exhibitions, Karl Marx and Capitalism, Richard Wagner and the Nationalization of feeling, Angela Merkel portraits from 1991 to 2021, Citizenships, the Struggle for Political Belonging in Germany, France and Poland since the 19th century, Roads not Taken – Another German History, Progress as a Promise – Industrial Photography in Divided Germany. These are the very interesting exhibitions one can see in the museum until the end of 2022. More