German Historical Museum

Founding and history

After the success of an exhibition on Prussia, which was shown in the Martin-Gropius-Bau in 1981, the then Governing Mayor of Berlin, Richard von Weizsäcker, commissioned four prominent historians – Hartmut Boockmann, Eberhard Jäckel, Hagen Schulze and Michael Stürmer – to prepare a memorandum, which appeared in January 1982 under the title Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin. The project enjoyed great support from Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who termed the founding of a German historical museum in Berlin a national priority of European importance in his speech on the State of the Nation before the German Bundestag on 27 February 1985. A commission consisting of 16 leading historians, art historians and museum directors worked out a concept for the museum in 1985/86 and put it up for discussion in public hearings in 1986. On 28 July 1987, the partnership agreement was signed between the Federal Republic of Germany and the land of Berlin concerning the establishment of the temporary trusteeship of the German Historical Museum as a private limited company.

Originally the Museum was to be located near the Reichstag Building at the Spreebogen, the government complex at the bend of the River Spree. Opening in December 1994, the former Permanent Exhibition, then entitled German History in Images and Testimonials, presented an initial cross-section of the collection with more than 2000 exhibits. The façade of the Zeughaus was restored between 1994 and 1998 on the basis of historical documents. In the course of the construction of the new adjacent museum hall by Ieoh Ming Pei between 1998 and 2003, glass roofing was once more installed above the Schlüterhof, the inner courtyard with the masks by Andreas Schlüter.

The Permanent Exhibition German History in Images and Artefacts was inaugurated in the Zeughaus by Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel on 2 June 2006. As of 30 December 2008 the DHM assumed the legal form of a Public Law Foundation of the Federal Government . Founded in 2009 to establish a centre for the remembrance and documentation of flight and expulsion, the Stiftung Flucht, Vertreibung, Versöhnung is under the aegis of the German Historical Museum.

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