Project Diary: Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin Speaks to a History That Is Both Rich and Tragic

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1990 Officials consider abandoning the Berlin Museum addition. They argue that funds are better spent on the vast expenditure required to knit the divided city’s infrastructure together. Also, reconstruction of the Neues Synagogue is already underway. However, Libeskind’s daring conception has already received international attention through the press as an extremely powerful statement that Germany recognizes the enormity of the Holocaust and is attempting reconciliation. A letter-writing campaign saves the building, but the schedule is extended to stretch out the cost to the government.

1991-92 A second threat to the project comes in the form of the budget. Estimates to build the design come in at DM 178.5 million. The budgeted amount is only DM 77 million (about $45.3 million in today’s dollars). Reworking the design, Libeskind shrinks the floor area to 162,000 square feet, straightens the tilted walls, simplifies the garden (the plants now grow upward), and deletes all the separate towers but the one representing the Holocaust. The revised budget is DM 117 million.

In 1992 the Berlin museums are reorganized. The history of the city up to 1871 (the year modern Germany was united with Berlin as its capital) is to be depicted in the Märkisches Museum. The Berlin Museum, including the new extension, will cover the period after 1871, but has a much larger trove of artifacts from the Märkisches collection to draw upon. With reconstruction of the Neues Synagogue (rechristened the Centrum Judaicum) underway, discussions also considere whether it would duplicate the mission of the Jewish Department.

Libeskind’s design also forces a debate about how Jewish history will be portrayed in the museum addition. Consultants are hired to look into whether the idea of compartmentalizing the story of Berlin’s Jews, as anticipated in the program, should be dropped, which would bring the display scheme into line with Libeskind’s design. Libeskind critics take issue with the proposal to integrate the accomplishments of Jews into the larger story of Berlin history, claiming it would play down their role, creating a kind of “forced assimilation.”

Libeskind’s scheme has created a paradox. Its very power has drawn international support for the idea of a Jewish museum in Berlin. But the highly specific intentions of the scheme limit curatorial discretion. The building is delayed again while its ultimate mission is debated. In early 1992 it is agreed that the Jewish Department would be located in the basement level along the axes to the stairs, garden, and Holocaust tower. Other historical city themes are to be developed on the upper levels, referring back at relevant moments to key Jewish contributions. The theater and fashion departments will also include the contributions of Jews. Though such a compromise seems to undercut the narrative Libeskind’s design anticipates, the firm is not asked to alter the design. The cornerstone is laid November 9, 1992.

1993-96 The process for selecting a director for the Jewish Department only now begins. The exhibition scheme of 1992 is further refined in 1993. Amon Barzel is chosen in 1994, but rejects the plan, calling for Jewish topics to be “autonomous,” detached from the city-history narrative. He asks that the entire Libeskind addition become a separate Jewish museum. In the meantime the role of the Centrum Judaicum becomes defined as the “site of Jewish self-portrayal,” putting it in conflict with Barzel’s vision.

Libeskind’s addition is topped-out in 1995, but the battle over Barzel’s “autonomous” or Libeskind’s “integrative” visions continues through 1996. At that time Barzel describes the addition’s mission as “[concentrating] on Jewish subjects through which one can learn more about general German history. It is no longer then possible to look at German history without also seeing Jewish history.” Seen as intransigent, Barzel is fired.

1997-1999 Construction continues, although at a leisurely pace because the flow of money from the government slows due to the vast financial obligations reunification entails. Libeskind unsuccessfully attempts to broker the conflicts over the museum’s identity. What remains unscathed is the museum’s design. Given budget cutbacks, it nears completion surprisingly true to the vision of the 1989 competition entry.

W. Michael Blumenthal is hired to direct the museum in 1997. He describes his selection as ironic since his once-prominent family had been driven from Berlin in 1939, when he was 13. Blumenthal has no museum experience, but he is an expert on German-Jewish history (his book The Invisible Wall, an exploration of his family’s history in Germany, was published in 1998). He has served three American presidents as Treasury secretary and ambassador, and once headed two large corporations. The museum hopes he will bring new organizational and political skills. Also, says Blumenthal, “I was someone who had not been involved in the previous debates.” He adds Dr. Thomas Freunenheim, a museum executive with experience at the Smithsonian, among others and Shaike Weinberg, who was a designer and first executive of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

The vision his team hammers out is “to depict the entire history of the relationship between German Jews and non-Jews from Roman times to the present,” Blumenthal explains, “with all its high points and accomplishments, on the one hand, and all the setbacks and disasters on the other.” Administratively, the museum is separatef from the Berlin Museum. It is to be freestanding, supported by the city, the national government, and private donations.

Blumenthal says the museum installation will “tell a story,” an approach successfully used in Washington’s Holocaust Memorial Museum, but which is uncommon in European museums. Such a narrative scheme usually calls for structures enclosing neutral, windowless, “black box” space. Blumenthal recognizes the curatorial challenge in Libeskind’s slits of glazing criss-crossing the galleries and the display complexities engendered by narrow passages and acute-angled rooms. Some museum experts tell Blumenthal the museum can’t succeed. “It’s challenging as hell,” he admits. On the other hand, “The architecture is a tremendous asset for a new museum. Many museums have to develop a clientele. We will have one automatically because the building is so extraordinary. Not a day goes by that people don’t beat on the door, pleading to get in.”

The building is completed at the end of 1998, but the installation will not be finished until October 2000. The empty building will open to the public for tours beginning this month.

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