Berlin Trip : Jewish Museum

I’ve been meaning to visit here for a while and it’s a substantial museum which is free of charge and seems very well financed. I must admit, I thought it was a pretty dreadful museum, but perhaps I was expecting something similar to the POLIN Museum of Jewish History in Warsaw, an incredible institution. This is one of few museums that I’ve left absolutely none the wiser on anything than when I went in (with one exception), which seems a sub-optimal situation, but I understand that many people have different experiences. Actually, I can’t think of any museum where I’ve been where I’ve left thinking I have no story to tell at all of my visit. This is particularly unfortunate as I try and find Jewish museums of varying sizes around the world and they’re often really impressive places. It takes around 10 minutes to get in because of the security processes that unfortunately are needed because of the nature of the museum, something which is a sad indictment of our times in itself.

The corridors were designed to give a feeling of “unease and disorientation”. Yes, that worked, it made me dislike the museum. Which struck me as the problem, for me, of the museum which is that it seemed to want to tell me things rather than show me them. I rarely knew where I was in the museum.

Some steps which are meant to cause unease I suppose. The museum refers to it as “our impressive staircase”, but it just seemed steep to me.

And a “voided void”.

There’s wasted space all over the place, but then there are pinch-points where visitors can’t see anything because people are clustered together.

I don’t really understand why a museum is built with so many unuseable areas and odd angles.

I like when museums display paintings like this so that the back can be seen, so I had a moment of thinking the curators had been careful with the design. But, no, they’d just put artworks on the back of each other, so they might as well have just put them on the wall. I’m not entirely sure why they’ve put the description of the artworks so near to the ground either.

The exception I mentioned earlier on is that I hadn’t seen much before in museums on how Jewish people lost their possessions during the war in terms of the actual sale of them. There were some interesting documents on this, showing how they were forced sales of possessions but very little money was gained.

The museum’s cafe. To add to my “unease and disorientation” I couldn’t work out how to get out as the exit door was marked as closed, so a helpful staff member showed me a rear exit so I could return to the street. I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t work out how to get out, which seems something of a basic function of any building. To be honest, this museum seemed to be a prime example of what happens when something is over-financed and has too much money. It becomes style over substance. It’s not as well reviewed as the POLIN Museum in Warsaw, but that is one of the greatest museums in the world and does an incredible job of explaining Jewish history, culture and doesn’t try and make people feel uneasy by making the building feel inaccessible. I also remember my visit to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, which I accept is telling just a certain part of the story of what Jews have faced (although obviously a big bit), but I remember the care taken into making that museum accessible, engaging and the displays made it emotive. Similarly, the Joods Historisch Museum in Amsterdam which told the story in a powerful and coherent way, although I know their positioning within a former Synagogue added somewhat to the atmosphere.

Anyway, having noted my numerous whinges, the museum is still well reviewed and although there are plenty of people who agreed with my assessment, there are far more who like what has been done here. There are hundreds of reviews which like the design and how it makes people feel uneasy, but everyone is different I suppose. I think I’m just an advocate of “show, don’t tell” and so I couldn’t connect to this museum at all and I was disappointed by the disjointed nature of the whole place. But, having noted that, it was free and so I can’t much complain. Although I evidently just have. For me, I wanted to see more about Jewish culture, community and how they had lived in Germany over the centuries, but there was very little about that in the bits of the museum I went to (which may or may not have been a comprehensive visit as I couldn’t work out where I was some of the time).