By Sebastian Bauer
The Berlin Story Bunker team wants to tell tourists what became of the Nazis after World War II. And delivers a visually powerful story of divided (and reunited) Germany.
The rickety handcarts full of old leather suitcases are reminiscent of escape, the loaf of bread with dimensions for each day of the week is reminiscent of the time of hunger after the Second World War. Beginning with this dark hour, a new museum in the Berlin Story Bunker on Schöneberger Straße tells the story of “Germany from 1945 to the present day”.
The bread with measuring tape shows the rations of a family in the post-war period Photo: Stefanie Herbst
The house connects to the permanent exhibition “Hitler – how could it happen” in the World War II bunker. “At the end of the show, many tourists kept asking us what happened to me after the Nazis after 1945,” says conflict researcher and museum director Enno Lenze.
Enno Lenze is a museum director and conflict researcher and is currently supporting the Ukraine, for example Photo: Stefanie Herbst
So it made sense to tell the history of divided and reunited Germany. The museum sees itself primarily as a contact point for tourists who don’t know too much about German history.
Re-enacted scene with a security guard at the border strip in front of the Brandenburg Gate Photo: Stefanie Herbst
The museum combines interesting events with vivid objects. A Beate Uhse catalog from the 1960s and Maoist literature in a replica 1968 student shack speak of the left-wing revolt, while a 1966 edition of the National-Zeitung (“Who really betrayed Hitler?”) recalls that the Nazis after 1945 were far from gone.
And so the show meanders through the epochs with digressions on global student unrest and the sexual revolution, sometimes a little too extensively, but with shredded Stasi files, football notebooks, Merkel anecdotes, RAF documents or a Berliner Späti, it always impressively finds its way into the relevant one history back.
Filing cabinets and garbage cans with shredded papers are reminiscent of the Stasi surveillance Photo: Stefanie Herbst
Historian Wieland Giebel even donated his Beatles records to the show. Raisin bomber pilot Gail Halvorsen (1920-2022) advised the museum on replicating small food parachutes from the Airlift days.
In the World War II bunker at Anhalter Bahnhof, German history is told in two museums Photo: Stefanie Herbst
And Berlin Story also remains true to current topics, and a Ukraine exhibition is to follow. The broken tank, with which the curatorial team recently protested against Putin’s war in front of the Russian embassy, has since been handed over to a museum in the Netherlands.
daily 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Schöneberger Straße 23a, 12/9 euros
In the BZ you always read world history first. Here: 1989 when the Wall came down Photo: Stefanie Herbst