germany military museum

Germany Military Museum - Now the Dresden Military History Museum, which is the official museum of Germany's armed forces, has taken on different and conflicting identities throughout its history. The building began life as an armory before becoming the Saxon Army Museum, after which it permanently housed the Nazi War Museum, then the Soviet and East German Museums. Unsure of the institution's role in a unified country, the German government closed the museum and announced an international competition to redesign the building.

The studio was selected as the architect for the extension in 2001 after submitting a bold design outside of the competition guidelines. The studio's approach was that the museum must change its identity in order to realize the institution's vision. A particular challenge for this project was that the original specification required that the extension not disturb the historic facade.

Germany Military Museum

The design boldly breaks the classical symmetry of the original building. The addition, a large, five-story, 14-story, 500-ton wedge of glass, concrete, and steel, crosses and overhangs the former arsenal. The 82-meter-high platform (the highest wedge level is 98 feet) offers breathtaking views of modern Dresden, and pointing to the triangle where the Dresden fire started, creates a place for reflection.

Dresden Military Museum Editorial Photography. Image Of Bundeswehr

The iconic shape has become an important national landmark and inspired the surrounding residential area. The building's forecourt and surrounding open spaces were considered key elements of the design. For large exhibitions, public spaces were designed to be open to the display of large works and artefacts.

The openness and transparency of the facade contrasts with the transparency and massiveness of the existing building. The latter reflects the strictness of the authoritarian past, while the former reflects the transparency of the military in a democratic society. The connection of these ideas is a distinctive feature of the new Military History Museum.

“It is a design that meets its function, combining geometric rigor with expressive details. While the museum is a tram ride from the center, it shows a different Dresden outside of the restored touristy old town. When he conceived the expansion ten years ago, he was at a creative peak. It shows. In this context, with this historical complexity, this war museum has the potential for good. "-Hugh Pearman, In August 1943, German soldiers attacked the village of Kommeno in western Greece. They burned the houses and drove off the villagers' livestock. They raped the women and tortured the men. They stuffed the babies with wool soaked in gasoline. "Their mouths and set them on fire. At dawn, the priest with the Bible under his arm faced the soldiers. He died under a hail of bullets. The Bible fell to the ground.

Historian Gorch Picken says he tells this story whenever people ask why he opened a war museum, and in Dresden of all places. He talks about it as he wanders through the unfinished exhibition, through dark, empty rooms and oppressive past walls designed by architect Daniel Libeskind.

Impressions From Inside The German Military History Museum In Dresden, Germany In January 2018 Stock Photo

Picken, 49, recreated the attack on Commen for the museum. He learned that the Bible of the brave priest was kept in the village church. Picken now wants to display the blood-yellow Bible along with 7,000 other items at the Bundeswehr Museum of Military History in Dresden, Germany's first combined military museum.

A group of young historians have set themselves a proud goal for the exhibition, which will open on October 14: they want to tell the story of the war - all wars - from a completely new perspective. "We expect to start a heated discussion," Picken said.

Today, most war museums - such as the Imperial War Museum in London and the Musée de l'Armée in Paris - are more like memorials to war than exhibition spaces. They offer weapons, light equipment and sleek uniforms, celebrate great battles and remember the heroic deeds of brave, patriotic warriors, often those who sacrificed their lives for their country.

A new war museum in Dresden aims to put an end to this tradition. Although there will be plenty of guns and cannons on display, and a succession of military campaigns to be told, historians have higher goals in mind. They want to explore the topic of violence from a cultural and historical perspective.

Man And Machine

The museum will answer the most important question in the history of mankind: where does violence come from? Is humanity evil? Is there such a thing as a just war? These are the questions being asked in Germany now that German soldiers are dying in Afghanistan, NATO is bombing Libya, and a dictator in Syria is shooting his own people.

As the saying goes, the first casualty of war is the truth. Individual events are deliberately silenced, unpleasant moments of history are silenced. Anyone, like the Dresden accountants, who claims to give a true picture of the war runs the risk of appearing arrogant and rude. Since the days of Nazism, Germans have had a hard time dealing with pathos—especially when it came to war. There is a heated debate over whether Chancellor Angela Merkel should be allowed to award soldiers with bravery medals, or whether politicians should use the word "dead" to describe fallen soldiers. But is it possible to explain the war without pathos?

Moreover, if conservatives presented war in all its painful detail, would they not conclude that all military action is reckless and that there is no reason for violence? And wouldn't that lead to the logical conclusion that German troops should not be in Afghanistan? To put the question another way: how self-critical is the German army, the Bundeswehr, really?

Gorch Pieken stands in the entrance hall of the museum. He wears bright glasses, the top two buttons of his shirt are unbuttoned, and his white hair is tied back in a ponytail. "The war is only the tip of the iceberg," he says. "We're interested in what's below the waterline." Picken studied in Cologne, then worked for 10 years at the German Historical Museum in Berlin. When the Ministry of Defense asked him to become the museum's scientific director, he jumped at the chance.

Military Vehicles — From Wwi To Today — Go On Display At New Mass. Museum

He's managed to rack up a lot of horror movies over the years because he tells stories that have never been told before. Stories like that of the nameless girl who repaired the shoes of a dead man in a concentration camp in Lublin, Poland. Shortly after writing the poem "Dead Shoes", he was also sent to the gas chamber. But his poem survived, and other prisoners learned it by heart. In October, when the museum opens, the poem will be displayed next to the shoes of the concentration camp prisoners. Although the museum is still under construction and most of its exhibits have been preserved, its impressive power is already evident.

The official opening is more than three months away. Builders' rubbish leaves the museum. The sound of drilling can be heard around the building. Workers are laying floors and laying electrical cables. The former barracks of Albertstadt have changed more in the last five years than in the previous 140 years. Many armies have used it since the 19th century. Its arsenal houses the military museums of the Royal Saxon Army, the German Imperial Army, the Nazi Wehrmacht and the East German National People's Army (NVA). After reunification, the German government decided to expand the Arsenal and turn it into a model Bundeswehr museum.

The expansion will cost $57 million ($80 million). Lt. Col. Mathias Rog, who was appointed director of the Military History Museum last year, says the project was unanimously accepted by the armed forces. The Bundeswehr wants the museum to be a modern center that reflects the main organization.

The Ministry of Defense commissioned the American architect Daniel Libeskind to redesign the museum. Libeskind's parents were Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust in a Soviet concentration camp until they were allowed to emigrate to Israel in 1957, from where they later emigrated to the United States. Now their son is building a German war museum.

Military History Museum Dresden

Libeskind has visited Dresden several times over the past few years, most recently with his wife, Nina. He says: “The German War Museum cannot simply be a weapons depot. He should take into account the difficult past of the country." This is not the first time Libeskind has helped Germans interpret their history. His project for the Jewish Museum in Berlin, which was completed in 1999, created a focal point in the German capital to commemorate the Shoah.

In Dresden, he drove a 30-meter (100-foot) wedge of steel and glass into the arsenal of the Late Classicist facade. As a result, the museum looks like the bow of a ship breaking through an iceberg. Although the historic stairwell has been preserved, the interior of the old building cuts a wedge. Strong stone pillars and large high ceilings