At Home in the Land of My Fathers: The German Historical Museum

Of all the museums I've visited in Berlin, the German Historical Museum covered perhaps the longest breadth of time. While the Pergamon, Bode, Altes, and Neues Museums all focused on a group of civilizations or a limited breadth of time, the German Historical Museum started with the earliest known records of Germanic settlements, both material (foundations, stones, and early tools) and written (when the Romans first explored the area), and progressed through the great breadth of time to the reunification of Germany. It is certainly worth going to when one visits Berlin, perhaps more important in my opinion than one of the many art museums in Berlin (especially the modern art museums). I enjoy art and beauty, and in my defense, I did see and enjoy both- however in the form of ancient paintings, sculptures, etc.

Back on topic. As any historical museum should begin, the museum first presented the remnants of the Roman conquests into Germanic country. I say "should," because too often speculation into pre-history has no basis upon which to stand. Instead of postulating how and where the Germanic tribes lived prior to any kind of evidence, all we saw were artifacts that had a date and place, with some commentary. I enjoyed this part of the museum, because it was quite honest about our ignorance of Northern Europe prior to any Roman records. So the first things that I saw picked up quite neatly from the Altes Museum, which housed the vast number of Greek and Roman artifacts. We saw remnants of a Roman villa in German, along with tools, weapons, and jewelry from the Roman times, although found north of the Alps. Below are pieces of a Roman arch, probably the remnants of a Roman fortification of some type.

From Roman times, the history skipped to Karl the Great, also known as Charlemagne (French) or Carolus Maximus (Latin). What confused me was how they could skip almost 500 years of history, but I suppose there wasn't much happening in Germania at that time, compared to the split of the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean region. Karl the Great (I'll stick with his German name, since I'm in Germany) was the son of Pepin the Short and ruled the Frankish Kingdom for 46 years. The Frankish Kingdom signified an interesting shift from the Roman empire to a Germanic one, and Christianity was the link between the two; Christianity having been embraced by Constantine, who announced freedom of religion through the Edict of Milan in 313, and the Roman Pope crowning Karl the Great as the King of the Holy Roman Empire in 800. Western Christianity had been moving more and more north as the result of missionaries being sent among the German tribes, which later became kingdoms. Karl's rule ushered in the Carolingian Renaissance, a flowering of Christian literature, art, and music; all focused in the city of Aachen, today in North-western Germany. That's him to the left, in a pretty studly crown.

Next came the Middle Ages, and with that time period also came weapons. And armor. And lots and lots of cool stuff to look at (such as chasubles, breviaries, and papal bulls).

Ahh...and now we come to my favorite weapon of all...the halberd. With it, a foot soldier could stab, hack, and bring a rider down from his horse with the point on the back end, which eventually became more and more curved like a hook. It's definitely a medium range weapon (in the same class as spears), so not well adapted to close fighting, but I'd take this weapon any day on an open field with room to swing and a horseman coming after me. In fact, this weapon was the preferred weapon of the Swiss Army, who also used short daggers for close combat...no, not called the Swiss Army knife.

Oooh...I love coats of arms.

The breviaries, both in Latin.

A neat looking chasuble. Who says we can't put religious symbols on our weapons?
(This is for Pr. McCain)

I'd like to think this is a family altar, but it's probably from some monastary or another, and used for private masses, given the chalice and paten, as well as the pyx for the adoration of the consecrated host.

A papal bull!

History now moves forward nicely from papal bulls to the Reformation. I got some nice pictures of Luther and Katie, which you've already seen before, so I'll post a picture I got of paintings of Frederick the Wise and John the Steadfast. Here's a shout-out to the John the Steadfast blog, which I read too infrequently.

And some pretty old copies (first printings perhaps?) of Luther's three most popular initial writings, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Of the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and Of the Freedom of the Christian. All are fantastic reads and required for seminarians in Church History III class.

And finally, I'll round off the religious part of the German Historical Museum with this famous sketch of the Seven-headed Luther by Johannes Cochlaeus. It pictures him as the seven-headed Antichrist from Revelation; the seven heads each bear a different title: Doctor, Martinus, Luther, Clergyman, Enthusiast, Visitor, and Barrabbas.

With the high Middle Ages came jousting, so here's a few pictures to sate your appetite. The helm seen below is different than what would be used in hand to hand fighting, because a sword could slip down it easily. However, it better deflected the tip of the jousting lance.

And now...I'm only halfway through. Unfortunately, I was expecting Bach at this point. I didn't see him. At all. This was the most disappointing parts of the whole museum. I even went back when I was in the WWI section to look for him, realize what I'd missed. I don't know how the German Historical Museum could forget about Bach. Maybe I missed a grand exhibit on another floor, which I desperately hope, or there was a serious mistake in not including Bach.

Next in German History came the Black Death apparently. I don't know why this small exhibit was after Luther and the Reformation, but maybe I was just mistaking the hooked beaked mask and skull and cross bones for some other plague that swept through Europe. Oh well. The Black Death swept through Europe in the early 14th Century and claimed a lot of lives...like up to 1/2 of the European population. Edit: the bubonic plague appeared more times after 1350, though not in the same ferocity, probably due to the growing medical knowledge of the time.

Now we come to colonization, in which Germany didn't take much interest, leaving the sailing to England, France, Spain, and the Dutch. Nonetheless, some Hessian mercenaries did fight for England in the Revolutionary War.

About that time, Napoleon swept through Germany and conquered Berlin, taking the Quadriga to Paris, as I mentioned earlier. After his defeat at Waterloo, Germany stormed France and took it back. See my other post. At this time there's more of a unification of Germany, which until now had been quite separated. In comes Kaiser Wilhelm I and his Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Kaiser Wilhelm is perhaps the most beloved emperor in modern Germany; one can see his name and influence all over Berlin, perhaps for good reason. Through several wars and diplomatic measures, he and Bismarck expanded Prussia to include
Schleswig-Holstein, Bavaria, Hanover, and Hesse. That's an oversimplification of the history that I don't quite have nailed down yet. So moving on...

At this time (~1910), Germany experience growing pains once again, and started manufacturing like crazy. Take a look:

Then the Great War happened; as you probably know.

About this time, I looked at my watch and noticed that I had about 45 minutes before class would start, and I hadn't covered the whole other half of the museum, from WWI to the present. So I sped through, taking pictures at what was interesting and leaving behind too much. Yeah, it's unfortunate, but I realized that I had already covered much of this history through the Holocaust Memorial and the DDR Museum. I really should return and walk slower through this section of the museum. Anyways, here are some photos:

Ahh...the perfect Germans, according to the Nazis.