This summer, I was able to visit Berlin, known for its many museums located on what’s dubbed “Museum Island.” However, not located on this island gathering of museums was the Jewish Museum (Jüdisches Museum Berlin). The first iteration of this museum was founded in 1933, but was closed by the Nazis in 1938, a clear erasure of Jewish ethnographic knowledge. It was reconstituted with a new construction design and mission statement in 2001.
As shown in the maps below, the museum first descends into an underground space where you walk along the “Axis of Continuity,” which intersects with the “Axis of the Holocaust” and the “Axis of Exile.” Here you deviate from the clear, straight path of the museum to witness relics and read stories of families who were able to flea, and from those who were captured by a Fascist regime, and killed. The experience of this underground portion is haunting, and creates a space where historical memory is engrained in the architecture design. At the end of the Axis of the Holocaust, there is a dark, cold space with only a slit of light opening up to the street above called the Holocaust Tower, which creates a sense of isolation and pause, where one may contemplate and consider the weight of the atrocities. These Axes that deviate from the Axis of Continuity are meant to disturb and disrupt the architectural flow that usually guides one into a museum. Thus the museum does not only serve as instructional and educational, but serves as a facilitator for thought-processes, that access a historical consciousness.
To continue to the rest of the museum, you must walk back along the Axis of Continuity to re-initiate yourself into the educational space. Ascending to the top floor, the rest of the museum guides one through the cultural history of the Jewish-German people. In what I consider the most impressionable spaces, called the Memory Void, 10,000 steel faces are placed on the ground. As people walk over these faces, you hear the echoing clang of each footstep – a prescient reminder of the violence, which precedes and exists as we walk through our own “continuity.” The museum tasks itself not so much with rationalization of an irrational and “barbaric” document of history (as Benjamin might say) but leaves the museum patron to consider the extreme form that categorization can take.
What a great analysis, Dylan! I love the way you show that rationality has a fraught relationship with history.
I really enjoyed reading your piece! As a Jewish woman who has studied the history of the Jewish people in depth, I applaud their use of architecture to show how major events like the Holocaust and Exile interrupt the continuity of the Jewish people, but that they nevertheless persist as a people. It sounds like a really incredible museum to visit. Thank you for sharing!
I enjoyed reading your analysis and although I’ve been to this museum your interpretation and experience really hit the nail on the head. I thought the walking on steel faces and hearing the clank of each step really sticks into our memory. The museum gives off a very eerie feeling and a sense of solitude, anxiety, and isolation which is in a way what a lot of jews felt in concentration camps. I felt like a lot of the places I visited in Berlin had the same saddening eerie feeling. Really loved reading this, thank you!
I felt overcome with emotion just reading your description of the museum. The fact that it was closed initially by the Nazis to erase Jewish knowledge and culture tells a lot about the significance the museum has now. I can only imagine how long it took the curators to design the setup as it is such heavy and powerful material to present. I appreciated how you included the picture of the Memory Void room. The visual representation alongside your description helped solidify even more the effectiveness of the piece.