THE NEWLY RESTORED Bodemuseum on Berlin’s Museumsinsel was unlocked for a two-day architectural preview last December, to be greeted with great acclaim. The Museum officially reopens later this summer, housing two parts of the Berlin State Museums, the Sculpture Collection and the Museum of Byzantine Art, as well as a selection of two hundred paintings from the pre-nineteenth-century collection of the Gemäldegalerie. Following the magnificent restoration of the Alte Nationalgalerie (reopened 2001), also on the island (Fig.I) – now without doubt one of the world’s most beautiful museums – the reopening of the Bode is a highly significant moment in the unfolding of the ‘masterplan’ that has been devised for the rebuilding and reorganisation of Berlin’s museums and collections following German reunification and the inauguration, in 1999, of the Berlin Republic. Particularly praiseworthy is the ease with which Heinz Tesar, the architect for the Bode, and the museum authorities have skirted the usual controversy surrounding restoration, by meeting half-way both conservative demands and calls for innovation. While the paintings and sculpture within will no longer follow the display as it stood from 1905 until the beginning of the Second World War, the interior preserves many elements of Wilhelm von Bode’s original suite of historic galleries (Fig.II).1

By contrast, the rebuilding of the Neues Museum, currently scheduled to open on 29th October 2009, has aroused significant controversy. Opened in 1855 as the second museum on the island after Schinkel’s Altes Museum (1830), the Neues Museum provided additional space for the Egyptian and classical works in the Prussian royal collection. It suffered far worse damage than any other building on the island during Allied bombing raids in 1943 and again in 1945, receiving direct hits which destroyed two wings. Structural problems, in particular its soft, damp foundations, hindered restoration during the years of partition. For Berliners, the ruin took on a memorably romantic quality – ‘Berlin’s Pompeii’, as the critic Heinrich Wefing called it. The exposure of the brickwork shell still gives the ruin a markedly antiquated feel. In certain places, for instance the ornate Niobidensaal, the interior is relatively untouched, whereas in other areas – the Egyptian court for example – its surviving remains have been placed in store. All these factors have meant that the architect, David Chipperfield, and the restorer, Julian Harrap, have had a very difficult task in deciding on an appropriate response. This was made no easier by strong historicist calls, in particular from the Gesellschaft Historisches Berlin e.V. (the ‘Historical Berlin Society’, an independent charity devoted to a ‘renaissance of the traditional European art of building’), to restore the building, as with the Bodemuseum and the Alte Nationalgalerie, to its former Prussian glory.

After much consideration, the decision was taken to preserve the historical fabric of the existing building, but to consider this history in the broadest possible terms. Thus, not only the original construction and development, but also the bomb damage, ruination during the years of partition, and even incipient, heavy-handed attempts to restore parts of the interior during the 1980s, are to be layered into the renewed structure. The resulting building will be an encyclopaedia of its own history. Historic construction methods, such as the use of clay pots to create a light honeycomb structure, essential for such a large building erected on soft foundations, have been recreated. By contrast, interior decorative schemes, such as Wilhelm von Kaulbach’s majestic cycle of murals in the main entrance hall and stairway, destroyed in the War, are not being recreated, favour being given to unadorned brickwork to emphasise natural rather than cultural history (Fig.III). When completed the building will house the Egyptian collection (which has already moved to the Altes Museum from Charlottenburg, where the recently acquired Schaff-Gerstenberg collection of modern painting will be installed in its place) and the Pre- and Early History collections.

Whereas the architects have successfully implemented their plans for the main building, other parts have proved more sticky. Chipperfield’s designs originally included a new entrance to serve all the island’s museums (see Fig.I), a glazed abstract monolith that would have provided the usual amenities for visitors and galleries for temporary exhibitions, freeing space in the main buildings, constructed in an age before mass tourism. Lack of available funds has put the construction of this new entrance on hold, and ignited a debate about the possibility of accepting private funding for its completion.

Although the question of funding is of crucial importance for bankrupt Berlin, currently surviving on federal subsidies, the ‘masterplan’, devised by the head of the Berlin State Museums, Peter-Klaus Schuster, continues undaunted. On the Museumsinsel itself, two other significant elements of the plan are the ‘Archaeological Promenade’, a basement-level walkway connecting all the museums, save for the Alte Nationalgalerie, in order to provide a physical and conceptual link between the various collections; and also the completion of the fourth wing of the Pergamonmuseum, to create a courtyard for large pieces of sculpture such as the Kalabsha Gate and the Sahura Temple Courtyard, at present in storage.

For Schuster, the Museumsinsel and its various collections will constitute a ‘Universal Museum’, which would bear favourable comparison with other ‘world’ museums such as the British Museum, the Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In response to the charge that the term ‘Universal’ has imperialist overtones, Schuster would surely answer that the non-European collections of Indian, African and Oceanic art, currently displayed in quiet abandon in the suburb of Dahlem, are currently slated for transfer to the more central Schlossplatz, opposite the Museumsinsel (although premises have yet to be established). The more serious criticism of the ‘Universal’ concept is that it runs contrary both to the decentralised tradition of museums in Berlin, and to the federal idea of culture in Germany. The most bitter criticisms come from those who see this centralisation, and its attendant ‘fast-track’ promenade through the museums, simply as a way to attract more coach parties of visitors.

Nevertheless, low attendance continues to be a problem for those Berlin museums not on the island, such as those built or planned for West Berlin before reunification. On a mid-week afternoon in late December last year, the Gemäldegalerie was virtually empty. This is quite extraordinary considering the world-class status of its holdings. One explanation is that the Museum has little interest in marketing itself, for instance by highlighting an individual work, though it has attempted this with one of its great jewels, Petrus Christus’s Portrait of a young lady, fading on posters all over the city. More plausible is the simple fact that the Kulturforum itself (one of the three museum areas in the western part of Berlin, near Potsdamer Platz, the others being further out in Dahlem and Charlottenburg) has no urban identity. In spite of the great building projects of Mies van der Rohe and Hans Scharoun, one is still aware of the empty spaces of old bomb sites. In addition, as has often been pointed out, the Gemäldegalerie has no architectural presence by which it could act as a centre of gravity. Worse still is the double-glazed mausoleum of the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Decorative Art) opposite the Gemäldegalerie.

For these reasons Bernd Lindemann, the director of the Gemäldegalerie, is adamant that the move of two hundred or so works to the Bodemuseum should eventually be followed by the entire collection, a move that could be celebrated with full justification as a homecoming. An urban planning competition was recently completed for redevelopment of an area adjoining the Bodemuseum. This would create an annexe in which the German, Dutch and English Schools would be housed, thus recreating the current division of the Gemäldegalerie into North and South – Dutch and German, and Italian and French. The sliding-tile puzzle of Berlin museums here offers one of its most welcome solutions: the emptied building at the Kulturforum could then be used to house the permanent collection of the Neue Nationalgalerie. These moves would undoubtedly bring benefits all round, particularly as a new gallery would provide space to show some of the larger paintings that are currently consigned to store. Lindemann wants the new annexe to carry the name of one of the Berlin museums’ greatest patrons, James Simon, of whom a bronze portrait bust is prominently shown in the entrance to the Gemäldegalerie. Of his many donations to the Nationalgalerie around the turn of the century, the bust of Nefertiti was the most spectacular.

As with Chipperfield’s entrance building, and, most notoriously, with the recreation of the Berliner Schloss, these are projects that are at present only conceivable with private sponsorship. However, unlike Britain or the United States, in Germany there is no tradition of private funding for the construction of state museums.

The rebuilding of the Museumsinsel, and the dramatic reorganisation of the State Museums, is the ‘Grand Projet’ of the Berlin Republic. Critics hold that it is a remnant of a time when it was believed that the city, as the new capital (from 1999), would double in size – which it has not – and that, like many other ambitious plans, it should be reduced in size. It may be that the symbol of the new Republic will be floated on private funds, in which case it can only be hoped that the selfless spirit of James Simon lives on.

1  See T. Gaehtgens: ‘The Berlin Museums after Reunification’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 136 (1994), pp.14–20.