Berlin’s Jewish Museum Fascinates, Disorients, And Disappoints

By Ruben Seth Fogel

BERLIN, Germany – Since the Jewish Museum of Berlin’s official inauguration last year, hundreds of thousands of visitors – tourists and locals alike – have trekked through its interior, including its permanent exhibition, “Two Millennia of German Jewish History.” The anxious anticipation surrounding the opening of the museum – and especially its permanent exhibition, which tries to offer a comprehensive journey through two millennia of Jewish-German history and culture – was particularly great as a result of the year-and-a-half delay between the completion of the building and the museum opening.

Specifically, people wondered whether the exhibition would harmonize with the radically modern architecture of the building that was designed and built by the famous Polish-born Jewish architect Daniel Libeskind. Critics warned of a “Disneyland-Museum,” as rumors about heavy emphasis on multimedia began to circulate. Fortunately, most concerns proved unjustified: While the permanent exhibition is unable to capture the spirit of Libeskind’s architecture, it effectively complements and balances the building’s emotional impact without taking away from the building’s powerful symbolism.

Even before entering the zinc-paneled structure, the museum’s unusual zigzag, bolt-like aerial shape, with its sharp edges and crass turns, gives the building a character of unceasing, dynamic movement and disruption.  Through this peculiar, imposing design, the museum brings fresh momentum to stagnant debates about the planned Holocaust memorial in the country as well as the current state of German Jewish-Gentile co-existence, and comes at a time when latent anti-Semitism has pervaded large parts of the political landscape (as became painfully evident in a recent political scandal involving unacceptable statements by the vice-head of the liberal German political party FDP).

The location of the museum carries meaning as well. In his article explaining the meaning and symbolism of the museum, “Between the Lines,” Libeskind writes, “I felt that the one binding feature which crossed East and West was the relationship of Germans to Jews.” It thus comes as no surprise that the Jewish Museum stands not far from where the Berlin Wall once stood, implying that the museum’s location and architecture are related: the breaking down of all barriers both by addressing a unified and universal audience and by abandoning the conventional experience of visiting a museum for the emotionally involving concept of experiencing a museum.

This is what makes the museum so radical and visionary.  According to Libeskind, a certain relationship must exist between a museum’s theme and its architecture – that is, form should follow function, function should follow emotion, emotion should follow content and meaning.

Libeskind deliberately wants to involve his audience not through the exhibitions but through the architecture. And so, upon entering the museum through a steep black slate staircase in the adjoining Old Building (a historic 17th century German court house) that leads into the underground level, visitors find themselves thrown into a confusing experience. Walls coming in at angles and uneven, slanted, or raised floors disorient, making walking harder. In some rooms, the ceiling descends to an uncomfortable height, causing feelings of claustrophobia and panic, only to soar upwards in the next room, leaving the visitor lost, overwhelmed by the open space.

On the underground level, three axes cross, each representing one aspect of German-Jewish history. The Axis of Continuity leads from the underground level through a steep staircase upwards and to the exhibition rooms; it represents the uncertain future of German-Jewish history, forms an infinite path of discovery, and symbolizes continuing cultural exchange between Jews and Gentiles.

The Axis of Exile leads out into the Garden of Exile and Emigration. The raised, uneven floors and angled walls make the ascent to the Garden burdensome. There is a light at the end of the corridor, but the corridor narrows, making it, incredibly, seem further away with each approaching step. Along the walls are written the names of cities that German Jews have traditionally used as either exilic destinations or stops along their difficult journey.

The Garden of Exile and Emigration, too, has its challenges: floors, paved with cumbersome cobblestones, are angled even more, and the forty-nine concrete pillars that form the garden restrict visibility. Yet despite their cold, rough exterior, the pillars radiate a feeling of strength and give comfort to those weary from their journeys.

The last axis leads to the Holocaust Tower. The Holocaust Tower lies behind a large, heavy steel door that opens into a tremendously high, dark, cold room with a narrow slit at the top letting a dismal amount of light in. The outside noise of cars, of people, of life, and of hope is audible but seems infinitely far out of reach; while the mind can reach out, the body is caught in the Tower’s depressing domain. However, contrary to personal expectation, the most powerful part of the third axis is the list of concentration camps written out in large white letters along the gray walls of the corridor leading to the Tower. The simplicity with which these heinous sites of mass murder are written on the walls carries an emotional impact comparable to only one other room in the entire museum: the Memory Void.

Cutting through the museum in a straight line, the Line of the Void, a set of empty rooms, or so-called Voids, materializes the emptiness that is left after the murder of six million European Jews – in human terms, but also culturally, scientifically, and intellectually.  The Memory Void, the largest of the Voids, hosts the most notable and unfortunately impermanent exhibition piece of the Jewish Museum: an installation titled Shalechet (Hebrew for “falling of leaves”) by internationally renowned Jewish-Israeli artist Menashe Kadishman. More than ten thousand heavy circular plates of iron of varying sizes cover the floor. Frightening faces crudely cut into these plates are walling, shouting, screaming, and crying out to visitors, sending goose bumps and a cold shudder through them. Complementing the eerie, solemn atmosphere of the Memory Void, Shalechet laments over victims but also sends a warning: “Never forget!”

A visitor might spend an hour and more exploring the Voids, Axes, and multimedia knowledge library before ever stepping foot into the permanent exhibition rooms in the top floors. Entering the exhibition almost feels like leaving the Jewish Museum, because of the distinctive difference in atmosphere between the dark melancholy of the underground levels and the bright, pleasant ambience of the exhibition floors – all feelings of depression are quickly eroded by a dazzling amount of colorful displays, a vast amount of information, and interactive multimedia presentations such as an interactive digital introduction to the Talmud.

Surprisingly, however, while the exhibition is extremely well done in terms of presentation, and despite its wealth of information, “Two Millennia” is hardly worth an in-depth discussion. The reasons are manifold: The information seems to be excessive, but never penetrates the superficial treatment that is symptomatic of the entire two-floor exhibition. The treatment of the entire Third Reich, for example, is sized down to a room the size of an average classroom. Also, the choice of subjects and the general tone of the exhibition develop the general feeling that the exhibition was made primarily for Gentiles as well as uneducated and assimilated Jews, whereas the museum as a structure is aimed at a universal audience.

It would therefore not be too harsh a judgment to say that the exhibition is weak and a little dull. In fact, it is highly doubtful whether the exhibition could stand on its own were it not for the location of the exhibition: the Jewish Museum. Thus, the most interesting aspect of the exhibition is not the exhibition itself but its interaction with Libeskind’s architecture and symbolism.

It is that interaction, in fact, that makes the exhibition a successful one.  It balances the serious and solemn, almost depressing emotional impact of Libeskind’s architecture through counter-point. The exhibition therefore provides an important partner for Libeskind’s symbolism and even enhances its power at times.  Throughout the museum’s exhibition rooms, Voids cut through the exhibitions, marked by their black outside walls, create a feeling of disruption and, through the juxtaposition of filled exhibition rooms to the empty Voids, attempt to visualize the devastating effect of the Holocaust on Jewish cultural life in Europe in the present day and future.

In the end, though, despite its weaknesses and superficiality, the Jewish Museum’s permanent exhibition, “Two Millennia of German Jewish History,” is an important, necessary complement to Daniel Libeskind’s groundbreaking vision of a museum.

 More information about the Jewish Museum of Berlin can be found by visiting its web site at www.jmberlin.de.  More information about Daniel Libeskind can be obtained by visiting www.daniel-libeskind.com.