Munich: The renovated Deutsches Museum opens its doors on July 8 – Munich

The asphalt in front of the new entrance has only been dry for a few hours on Wednesday afternoon, and a chorus of (nervous) saws and drills buzzes and rattles from the house. Cables, buckets, containers everywhere. Hardly inside, someone shouts frantically: “Don’t touch the railing, the paint is still fresh.” Final spurt on what is perhaps the most prominent construction site in the city: after six years of renovation work, the first part of the extensively restored Deutsches Museum will open on Friday, July 8th with initially 19 freshly brushed exhibitions – with a three-day festival between the Cornelius and Bosch bridges. However, the last few meters up to that point are still a tour de force for everyone involved. But the heart of the house already beats, if you want to call the shows so euphemistically, as the parcours for the press on Wednesday shows.

“From the cleaning ladies to the curators, everyone is extremely happy when things finally get going,” General Director Wolfgang M. Heckl welcomes the guests to the preview at the new interim entrance, a translucent glass body near the Cornelius Bridge. Until 2028, when the general refurbishment of the listed heavyweight is completed as planned, you can reach the building and the 19 individually curated new permanent exhibitions from here via Uferstrasse – from model railways to nuclear physics, from robotics to musical instruments. A third of the exhibits were newly purchased, another third had to exist in depots until then, and the remaining third could also be seen earlier.

In the future, the first permanent exhibition on robotics in the Deutsches Museum is guaranteed to be densely besieged “Nao”, which is surrounded by almost ten other humanoid specimens. The little fellow, who also speaks Bavarian and who, at the touch of a button, imitates a number of the nonsense that the landlord Heckl shows him, sometimes as an elephant, sometimes as a guitarist, is sure to outperform the colleagues from the household help group or from bomb disposal who are standing next to him. Model railway enthusiasts will lose themselves hours in front of the 44 square meter, digitally controlled layout of the fictitious Lower Franconian town of Wernmünden in its local and long-distance traffic connections. The optics section comes up with an Oktoberfest-like hall of mirrors, in which you can basically see yourself as in a teaspoon at breakfast, just life-size. If you walk towards your own picture, it goes out at the focal point.

Value was also placed on “new, diverse mediation,” says Dagmar Klauer, head of museum operations. “In addition to the free department tours, there are science shows in the auditorium in the entrance hall, demonstrations in the chemistry room or at the microscopic theater using the scanning electron microscope.” In addition to the media stations to click and listen to, the more than 8,000 exhibits are explained in multiple languages ​​in a digital guide, with stories and films about their inventors.

Open detailed view

In the case of “old friends” such as “Aunt Ju” in the historical aviation department, a focus has recently also been placed on the historical context. The military use of old flying objects is discussed, as well as the production by forced laborers during the Nazi era. Small print is often replaced by information at the push of a button throughout the building. The house has recently become barrier-free – this also includes button models for the visually impaired and videos in sign language. And because the heavy stone ship on the Museum Island should finally get a fresh breeze blowing its nose at the very top, the “Woman in the Moon” is moving in alongside space travel, a roof terrace gastronomy that opens independently of the museum and offers a magnificent view of the shore the Isar gives.

Admission outside is free for the opening festival from July 8th to 10th. Tickets for the Deutsches Museum itself for the celebration weekend and the time after are available from now on www.deutsches-museum.de/museumsinsel/tickets. “Around 3,500 people can be in the exhibition building at the same time,” says Dagmar Klauer. “That’s our limiting factor.”