A Nobel Prize winner for literature, namely Herta Müller, as patron, and a Federal President as patron, namely Joachim Gauck: the initiative for an exile museum in Berlin can come up with prominent names. The founding director was Christoph Stölzl, who died at the beginning of the year and already founded the German Historical Museum in Berlin. The board of directors of the foundation is the former Berlin Secretary of State for Culture, André Schmitz. And because attending prominent names is currently one of the few things the museum can do to get itself off the ground, Schmitz led Müller and Gauck through the so-called “Workshop Exile Museum” for the press on Thursday starting this weekend, appropriate to the “Humboldt Box” in front of the construction site of the Berlin Palace’s new building, is to be attuned to the museum – in a participatory way: future visitors should, as they say, be able to get involved in advance.
In order to raise 40 million euros, the museum has to draw attention to itself
The actual museum building will be erected according to a design by the Danish artist Dorte Mandrup behind the remains of the facade of the former Anhalter Bahnhof, where so many journeys into exile once began. Construction is scheduled to start next year and completion is planned for 2026. And until then, the museum will have to draw attention to itself again and again, because of the calculated total costs of 60 million euros, 20 million have already been raised, but the rest have not yet.
The workshop as a foreshadowing is now housed next to the Villa Grisebach auction house, which until recently was the home of the Käthe Kollwitz Museum, which in turn had to seek exile at Charlottenburg Palace under protest. Next weekend should be with Workshops, performances and discussions the topicality of the topic of exile should be underlined, because this is already obvious due to related terms such as flight and migration.