Insight
Berlin's new museum launches search for artifacts of Jewish
TOBY AXELROD
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Berlin
T
Cullen said 500,000 visitors are
expected each year at the museum once
exhibitions open. The estimated oper-
ating costs will be about $11 million.
Already, tens of thousands have vis-
ited the celebrated building, designed
by Polish Israeli architect Daniel
Libeskind, since it opened in February
for weekend tours.
Some have called the building a
sculpture in itself. Representing a bro-
ken Star of David, the museum is cov-
ered in gray zinc panels and is pierced
by jagged windows.
he walls of the new Jewish
Museum here are bare,
except for shard-like windows
that let in slashes of light.
From the top floor, it seems the
city's pre- and post-war buildings
unfold outward like petals around this
silvery, zigzag heart.
Currently, it is a museum without
exhibits, but Michael Cullen hopes to
change that soon.
As coordinator of
research, Cullen is appeal-
ing to the public for "stuff"
for the first exhibit, which
is scheduled to open in
October 2000. He wants
material pouring in from
all places where there are
people with German roots.
"We are looking for
everything and everybody
))
and everywhere we can,
says Cullen, who was born
in New York in 1939, son
of Jewish immigrants from
Eastern Europe. He has
lived in Berlin since 1967.
Cullen hopes to receive
items related to the 1848
revolution in Germany,
which was one in a wave of
democratic uprisings across
Berlin's new Jewish Museum. The Holocaust
Europe at the time. He also
Tower is on the left; Exile Garden on the right.
wants items on Jewish life
in the countryside and
cities, assimilation and con-
It took six years to build the museum,
version, and Jewish cultural life.
and
the road to its opening has been
"Religious life is only one facet of
rocky, with fighting over who should
Jewish life in Germany," said Cullen.
direct it and what it should contain.
If something is valuable, like a
The city government fired the pre-
painting, the museum will consider
vious director, Israeli curator Amon
purchasing it, but money may not be
Barzel, reportedly because of his uni-
a major consideration.
versal
and contemporary approach to
Cullen quoted Barbara Falk
Jewish
art and history.
Sabbeth of New York, who has been
After
former U.S. Treasury
holding on to a box of papers about
Secretary
Michael Blumenthal was
her family's life in Nazi Germany.
hired as a replacement, he won admin-
"I realized while at your museum
istrative autonomy for the museum, so
that the history that I have been trying
that he and Assistant Director Torn
to come to terms with is not mine
Freudenheim — both of whom come
alone, and that the past is, and should
from families that escaped Nazi
be, shared," wrote Sabbeth after visit-
Germany — are free to make decisions
ing Berlin this April with her sister, Eve
about exhibits rather than work under
Haberman, who was born here. The
the thumb of the Berlin city museum.
box is as much yours as it is mine."
The museum's mandate has like-
wise changed.
Instead of focusing on the history
of Jews in Berlin, it will cover
German Jewish history from Roman
times to today.
Blumenthal has made it clear that
although the Holocaust will be one
theme, exhibitions will also focus on
the vibrancy of Jewish life and culture.
Cullen knows the museum's search
might conflict with the collection
efforts of other institutions, such as
New York City's Museum of Jewish
Heritage — A Living
Memorial to the
Holocaust.
"I don't want to
irk or bother them in
their quest for materi-
al," says Cullen, not-
ing that he is looking
only for Germany-
related items. "We
know there is going
to be competition."
But there is also
cooperation, including
with the Leo Baeck
Institute in New York,
which focuses on
German Jewish histo-
ry, and with the Jewish
museum in Frankfurt.
Plans are under way
for cooperation with
the Jewish museums in
Paris and in Vienna.
Why are Germans
in general.so interest-
ed in Jewish history?
Why, some five years ago, was Berlin's
exhibit on Jewish life one of the most
visited shows in recent memory?
"There is a large population which is
desperately trying to find out what went
wrong with its history," Cullen says.
What went wrong does seem to be
always in the background. But, he
adds, quoting Blumenthal, "We are
talking about Jewish life, not about
Jewish death."
The Museum Of
"What Went Wrong"
7/23
1999
26 Detroit Jewish News
To contact the museum search
team, write Michael Cullen, Jewish
Museum Berlin, Lindenstrasse
9-14, Berlin 10969, or e-mail
Recherchen@jmberlin.de
Remember
When • •
From the pages of the Jewish News
for this week 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50
years ago.
1989
Seven. American Jews demonstrat-
ing at the Carmelite convent at
Auschwitz were drenched with
water and beaten as they were
dragged off the grounds.
Paul Zlotoff, former Detroit Bar-
Ilan chairman and current vice
president of its American Board of
Overseers, was elected to the uni-
versity's Global Board of Trustees.
1979
Avi Cohen, Israeli soccer star, was
paid $400,000 by English champi-
onship Liverpool team for his transfer.
U.S. Sen. Rudy Boschwitz of
Minnesota, sponsor of legislation to
permit an additional 1,000
Vietnamese boat people to enter
the U.S. each month, claims to be
the Senate's only refugee; he and his
family fled Germany in 1935.
1969
The chief of staff of Israel's armed
forces claimed that Egypt was creat-
ing a serious new refugee problem in
the Suez Canal zone by continued
violation of the cease-fire agreements.
Paul Silverman, on the faculty
at Oak Park High School, is
directing an institute in drama at
the University of Detroit.
1959
Israel's parliament defeated a pro-
posal by the National Religious
Party seeking cancellation of the
compulsory two-year military ser-
vice requirement for women.
A Jewish former mayor of
Hackney, England, was found mur-
dered after his office at the
Workmen's Circle Friendly Society
was robbed of 8,000 pounds.
1949
Exhibitions depicting educational
and artistic activities in the Soviet
Union were arranged in various
towns in Israel by the Soviet legation.
Julius Chajes, local pianist and
composer, is making his fourth
consecutive European concert tour,
including an appearance over the
BBC in London.