An amber game board from Königsberg made in 1607, Queen Luise’s dressing gown from 1806, the poster for the East Berlin exhibition “40 Years of the GDR”, and the IKEA bunk bed salvaged from a refugee shelter in Kassel in 2015 – the exhibition “Objects. History. Stories. Reviewing the Collection” is presenting items from the collection of the Deutsches Historisches Museum, some of which have never been shown before, and examines the items on display in terms of their provenance and significance.
In the beginning the exhibition focuses on the DHM’s collection itself and on its 150-year history. The Zeughaus, originally built in the early 18th century as a representative armoury of the Prussian kings, housed the “Hall of Fame of the Brandenburg-Prussian Army” from 1883 onwards. Its subsequent history in the 20th century includes the building’s further utilisation, initially by the Nazi regime as a military museum, then its temporary use by the Allies after the Second World War, and from 1952, as the central socialist history museum of the GDR, the Museum für Deutsche Geschichte. Following reunification in 1990, the Deutsches Historisches Museum, founded three years earlier in West Berlin, took over the Zeughaus and its collections. In 2003, the post-modern exhibition hall designed by Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei supplemented the Baroque building. This part of the exhibition displays objects and ensembles that represent the collection’s focus and the historical perspective of the respective era. Exhibition objects have always carried political significance.
In the second part of the exhibition, places, locations, and regions take centre stage. Selected object histories tell of contested spheres of influence, of global trade, colonisation, and the exploration of new territories, as well as of vanished places, borders, flight, and exile. Among the displays are outstanding artistic cabinet pieces such as a “glass guest book” – the Counts of Oettingen’s Welcome Beaker, engraved with 30 names, dates and mottos, or a two-volume parchment Luther Bible from 1535 bears witness to the conflicts between Catholics and Protestants. The transformation of an entire industry and a whole region is symbolised by heavy machinery and a miner’s equipment from the Prosper Haniel colliery in Bottrop – which closed its doors in 2018 as Germany’s last active coal mine. Two object histories that could not be more contrasting, yet both tell of movements of flight as well as “migrations of objects”: on the one hand, a complete Biedermeier interior which, since its former owner’s flight during the Second World War, has undergone an eventful odyssey, and, on the other hand, two IKEA bed frames converted into a bunk bed that came from a refugee shelter in Kassel, established in 2015. It is adorned with children’s drawings that bear witness to their life-threatening escape by boat.
8.5.2026 – 31.10.2027
