Panorama of Berlin

Yesterday’s article dealt with how the prestige architecture of the GDR was made invisible after the fall of Berlin Wall and how the city was also to be designed according to the historical model. The basis of this redesign are, among others, the paintings of Eduard Gaertner. It shows a Berlin of the 1830s to 1850s in which industrialization has not yet left any characterizing traces. Despite its visualization of pre-industriality, Gaertner’s work is quite modern. In his panorama from the roof of Friedrichswerder Church, Schinkel’s Bauakademie is prominently featured. At the time of the painting’s creation, however, it was not yet finished. Gaertner inserted it into his painting in advance with the help of Schinkel’s plans.

This work fascinates me. Gaertner’s montage technique for the precise adaptation of his image to the future provides a result which after all shows for a good 100 years an accurate description of the view from the Friedrichswerder Church.

My photograph of the same place was taken at a moment when the GDR Foreign Ministry, which had stood in place of the Bauakademie, had long since been demolished. Palast der Republik also no longer existed. A mockup of the Bauakademie had been built from scaffolding poles and tarpaulins. At the place where the Humboldt Forum is to open as a cladded concrete replica of the palace, excavations are currently taking place. So the site is empty and would still be ready for an interesting design.

New Building of the Museum Humboldt Forum

The most convincing design in the competition for the construction of the Humboldt Forum was for me submitted by the studio Kuehn Malvezzi Architects. This design was to be oriented not according to the historical façade, but rather to the historical building technology. Initially, only the preserved parts of the historical façade were to be used. Later, the facade could have been slowly supplemented according to the historical model. Above all, however, the design for a modern new building of museum did not promote the illusion of a historical building in any detail.

Now, in a few months, a new building will be completed which tries to look like the residence of the German Emperor. As you know, the Humboldt Forum will house the Ethnological Collections of the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin. In a sense, parts of the collection will thus return to the place where they had long been kept, as part of the art chamber of the Berliner Schloss. I’m quite curious to see whether it will be successful, particularly in this location, to critically reflect and reconstruct the colonial history of this collection. The building does not offer the best conditions for this.