The Jewish Museum in Berlin

This section provides an introduction to the Jewish Museum in Berlin and its architect, Daniel Libeskind.

Building the Museum

• The Jewish Museum in Berlin was built between 1993 and 1998 by architect Daniel Libeskind.

• In 1988, the city senate decided to build a new Jewish museum on a plot next to the Collegion House, an 18th-century building that had once housed the Supreme Court of the Kingdom of Prussia.

• Liebeskind entered a competition with 165 architects for designing the museum.

Inspiration for Design

• According to Liebeskind, Walter Benjamin's book Ein Bandstrasse one way street and Schoenberg's opera Moses and Aaron inspired his design.

• He wrote his proposal on the staves of a musical score and entitled it "Between the Lines."

• The building is characterized by lines on its surface that stripe its facades up to an extraordinary broken line that contorts the whole mass from end to end of the plot.

Symbolism of Design

• For Liebeskind, this zigzag embodies all violence and ruptures in the history of Jews in Germany.

The Jewish Museum Berlin

This section describes the architecture of the new Jewish Museum in Berlin and how it is intertwined with the history of Germany and the Jews.

The Entrance

• The entrance to the new Jewish Museum is from inside a Baroque building, but nothing external links the two buildings.

• The entrance is a large untreated concrete space that opens onto an underground staircase instead of sweeping up nobly to upper floors as expected in museum staircases.

The Corridors

• There are three corridors or axes that embody in space the three major experiences in German Judaism: continuity, exile, and death.

• These corridors are not free spaces but ideologically derived spaces. They are harshly emphasized by lines of light in the ceiling.

• Only one of these three paths leads to the museum galleries. It is called the axis of continuity, which embodies a Jewish presence in Germany.

Axis of Continuity

• The axis of continuity opens onto a modest staircase that suddenly reveals itself as a spectacular perspective rising from basement to third floor.

• After compressing space, Libeskind expands it upwards. However, he only frees space in one direction upwards.

Axis of Exile and Holocaust

• The other two underground axes are exhibition areas displaying photos and children's drawings as souvenirs of exile and extermination.

• One axis leads to a black door behind which lies a concrete tower plunged into obscurity -the tower of Holocaust.

• Crossing this axis leads outside into open air -the scenario for leaving Germany.

This transcript describes how the architecture of the Jewish Museum Berlin is intertwined with the history of Germany and the Jews. The museum's three corridors or axes embody in space the three major experiences in German Judaism: continuity, exile, and death. The axis of continuity leads to a modest staircase that suddenly reveals itself as a spectacular perspective rising from basement to third floor. The other two underground axes are exhibition areas displaying photos and children's drawings as souvenirs of exile and extermination. One axis leads to a black door behind which lies a concrete tower plunged into obscurity -the tower of Holocaust.

The Garden of Exile and the Jewish Museum Berlin

In this section, the architect describes the design of the Garden of Exile and its relationship with the Jewish Museum Berlin building.

Design of the Garden of Exile

• The garden is a labyrinth of leaning pillars that destabilizes and nearly unbalances the visitor.

• The garden is a perfect square with strict right angles, but the architect has tipped it to create a double 10-degree slope so that when walking through the pillars, the pitch changes at every turn.

• The garden is completely cut off from outside by a dry moat worthy of a fortress. It is an illusion that there is an escape into free air.

Design of Jewish Museum Berlin Building

• The building should be covered by a very thin metal to not expose its construction which is severe tectonic, very modern.

• Gashes, cuts, scars, openings in the building break with all systems of composition, modern or traditional.

• To make them (linear openings), Libriskein drew lines on a plan of the city of Berlin to link addresses real or imaginary emblematic figures of German Judaism. Then he projected resulting diagrams onto volumes to create totally haphazard pattern.

Exhibition Space

• Although finished in 1998, museum project was constantly being reconsidered and postponed as much because German reunification as because preconceptions architect had nothing to display.

• Interior decorators from Munich were employed for the work. Walls, panels, columns, and display cabinets, stairs and mezzanine floors spread through galleries obliterating their singularities.

• The voids are a refusal to give way to nostalgia. The negation of the very idea of a museum. There is nothing to see through these slits unless it is the surprised faces of the visitors.

Challenges in Designing Jewish Museum Berlin

In this section, the architect describes some of the challenges he faced while designing Jewish Museum Berlin.

Challenges Faced

• The project was not something that could be developed in his office and shown to a few people with nice drawings. He had to meet every week with 50 bureaucrats of the city who challenged every line with living skin.

• They questioned why they were paying money to build a space that was useless? That was not heated? It is not really a museum space? You can call it a void but reduce it to something that is economically viable.

• He tried to convince them that it is necessary to organize the museum around different ideas about a museum. It is not a story you can tell from A-Z like an encyclopedia.

Conclusion

• The building has become one of Berlin's most visited landmarks since its opening in 2001.