BUILDING INTERIOR
Light at the End
|
GOOGLE EARTH
.
The Jewish Museum in Berlin is in an urban setting with lots of trees surrounding it. At the back of the building is a large garden and in front of the Museum there are many other buildings setup in a city format. The fact that this museum is in the capital of Germany seems to speak volumes to the population the museum is intended to reach due to its central location and easy accessibility. Its setting tells people that the building is welcoming to all people, no matter their ethnicity or race as it is in such a diverse city, and furthermore being located in the capital of Germany, the heart of the Holocaust, only provides further significance to the museum that focuses heavily on that event. The garden and many lively, beautiful trees around the museum makes it a comfortable, inviting area that then puts forth an uncomfortable message; however, the contrast helps to evoke greater feelings of sorrow and horror when visitors are remembering the Holocaust.
The Jewish Museum in Berlin is in an urban setting with lots of trees surrounding it. At the back of the building is a large garden and in front of the Museum there are many other buildings setup in a city format. The fact that this museum is in the capital of Germany seems to speak volumes to the population the museum is intended to reach due to its central location and easy accessibility. Its setting tells people that the building is welcoming to all people, no matter their ethnicity or race as it is in such a diverse city, and furthermore being located in the capital of Germany, the heart of the Holocaust, only provides further significance to the museum that focuses heavily on that event. The garden and many lively, beautiful trees around the museum makes it a comfortable, inviting area that then puts forth an uncomfortable message; however, the contrast helps to evoke greater feelings of sorrow and horror when visitors are remembering the Holocaust.
FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCE
"My impression of the building was that it was unique in the way it is shaped as well as the interior cuts and slashes to the walls. I think I most enjoyed the Holocaust Tower, which only had a single source of light and nearly forces any individual into a state of panic because of the claustrophobic state one is put in. The immense amount of emotions people can experience through that one room, as well as the empathy for the victims of the Holocaust, is extremely powerful.”
- MAYA FRASER
INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL LIBESKIND
In this video Daniel Libeskind speaks of the time he spent seeking information from Jewish cemeteries and Jewish families about the Holocaust. He also speaks of the state of mind and spiritual legacy that no longer exists from the Jewish culture that he saw when he looked at the tomb stones, overgrown with vegetation, representing the blank future of the Jewish families to come. He says that there is a void because there was no one left off these families to see the “emptiness of these slabs of marble". The video clearly implies his reason for making the museum so striking, as he wanted to change this lack of remembrance and create an experience that would stick with people long after they had already left the museum.
VIDEO FEATURE
One noticeable thing about this video is the way the Shalekhet or “Fallen Leaves” installation by Menashe Kadishman seems to be a simple mess of iron faces thrown across the floor in an unplanned way. However, what is clearly the most intense part of the video is the way people are forced to walk on all of these faces to continue along the museum; although they are clearly made of metal they are also just as clearly representing victims of the Holocaust, and stepping on them has incredible intellectual consequences as people are forced to think about how this translates to the horrendous actions committed by Nazis during the Holocaust.
BLOG
One thing I learned from this weblog is that the original Jewish Museum in Berlin was established in 1933, but that the Nazis then closed it in 1938. The author goes on to state that “unfortunately, the museum remained vacant until 1975.” I personally disagree with the statement that the building remaining vacant until 1975 was an unfortunate turn of events. Rather, I believe Germany needed a time of healing and a time of forgetting before the people were again ready for this unconventional museum to reestablish and reconnect with the Jewish culture that was lost during World War II. Furthermore, this allowed for the creation of a Jewish Museum that fully captured the Jewish experience up to the present, as the Holocaust is such a defining moment in Jewish history.
MAGAZINE ARTICLE
An article by Tom Mueller about the Jewish Museum in Berlin was featured in the Smithsonian Magazine in 2006. In this article, I learned that the museum design and architect were actually decided through an International competition in which Daniel Libeskind stood out because of his unique design that “illustrated the symbiosis of Jewish and German culture over the centuries, yet at the same time underscore the near absence of Jews in Germany today.” Another thing I learned from this article was that the museum has no doors above ground, so the only way in is at three-way crossroads 30 feet below ground. The last and maybe most important detail I learned from this article is that all three underground avenues of the museum have some way of putting the viewers in a disorienting and Holocaust like state of mind; the Garden of Exile has a titled ground, the Holocaust Tower is an empty area of concrete lit by a single window, and the third avenue is a permanent documented history of the misery of German Jews went through.