Royal Museum of Arts and Crafts (today Martin-Gropius-Bau)

The Martin-Gropius-Bau, located in Kreuzberg, opened its doors in 1881 as the Museum of Decorative Arts at Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 7 (today Niederkirchnerstraße 7). [1] [Fig. 1] The building experienced an eventful history until it was severely damaged by the war in 1943. It was characterized by rapidly growing collections and a constantly changing Berlin museum landscape.

While ethnological museums and their collecting practices have so far been increasingly the focus of the debate on objects from colonial contexts, the example of the Kunstgewerbe-Museum shows that non-European objects also made up an important part of the collection concept in arts and crafts collections, and that their trade and acquisition presumably drew on the colonial infrastructures of other powers or those of other powers. The challenge for museums and provenance research today is, on the one hand, to make visible the complex circumstances – the political and social conditions – under which the objects left their place of origin and entered the museum collections. [2] On the other hand, it is important to pursue the question of the respective role of these objects in the collection and presentation contexts then and now against the background of (post)colonial orders.

The cubic brick building, built mainly with state funds according to the designs of the architectural firm of Martin Gropius and Heino Schmieden, initially housed the collection of the Kunstgewerbe-Museum as well as the affiliated teaching institute and the library (both were housed in an extension on the neighbouring property to the east from 1905). With the Museum of Ethnology, which was completed in 1885 in the immediate vicinity at Königgrätzer Straße 120 (today Stresemannstraße), the Kunstgewerbe-Museum formed a new museum quarter in southern Friedrichstadt at the end of the 19th century. The art treasures were to be on display not only on the Museum Island, but increasingly throughout the city, in the still young imperial capital. [3] [Fig. 2] Their representative location in the urban space – in a lively business district, not far from other cultural (Friedrich Wilhelm University) and political institutions (Prussian State Parliament, Reichstag) as well as the Anhalter Bahnhof as a transport hub and the city's most important long-distance railway station – underlines the contemporary importance of the two institutions as places of knowledge transfer for the aspiring bourgeoisie, in the case of the Kunstgewerbe-Museum also of the education of taste and the promotion of trade. Last but not least, they were an expression of the Empire's desire for global political recognition. [4]

The museum had its origins in 1867 with the founding of the Deutsches Gewerbe-Museum – making it the third of its kind in the world. The impetus for the establishment of such museums, whose aim was to promote and increase the national competitiveness of trade and industry through a collection of models and subject-specific teaching, had been given by the first World Exhibition in London in 1851. Here, technical negligence and aesthetic defectiveness of industrially produced products in contrast to traditional craftsmanship had been noticed. The British royal family reacted quickly in 1852 with the founding of the South Kensington Museum (today: Victoria & Albert Museum) with a collection of samples and a school. Other industrialised countries followed suit. In 1867, Prussia also joined "this Europe-wide reform movement for the revival of arts and crafts"[5]. A private initiative of artists, craftsmen, industrialists and scholars had come together to create a central educational institution for crafts and industry in Berlin, which included a museum collection, a teaching institute and a special library, which were initially provisionally housed at various locations. [6]

Although the focus was on European arts and crafts, the collection of the Museum of Decorative Arts from the very beginning also included a wealth of non-European objects – to a lesser extent than that of the neighbouring Museum of Ethnology. They were intended to provide new impetus for the German art industry in all its diversity. [7] To this end, according to Julius Lessing, it was necessary to "create the most exquisite that has been produced in this field at any time, in any country" [8].

This global claim manifested itself programmatically in the outer façade of the museum building, which was designed with ornaments, portraits and allegorical motifs: the most magnificent and striking decoration was formed by the Venetian glass mosaics on a gold background in the large wall panels. In large individual figures, as it says in the "Guide to the Collection of the Museum of Decorative Arts" of 1885, they were intended to symbolize "the most important cultural epochs" – "China and Japan, Egypt, India, Arabia [...] Rome, Byzantium, the Gothic, the Renaissance [...] the Greeks"[9]. The female personification of China, for example, is depicted in rich costume with a headdress made of clasp and diadem, to whom a child with a traditionally shaved head hands over a vase. [10] [Figs. 3, 4]

Even at the time of its founding, the museum's main holdings consisted of a collection of "recent and oriental works"[11], which the Prussian state had purchased and made available to the museum on the occasion of the Paris World's Fair in 1867. [12] In the following years, especially after the founding of the German Empire, the collection grew explosively under the direction of its first director, the young art historian Julius Lessing, through collection purchases, donations and the merging of old holdings. In 1880 it counted 29,000 "arts and crafts [...] works of all times and peoples"[13].

In the years that followed, Lessing continued to supplement the holdings with acquisitions of non-European objects from the World Exhibitions. [14] These oversized events, which attracted millions of visitors, were on the one hand a stage for the trial of strength between the various industrial nations, and on the other hand places where foreign civilizations and peoples were exhibited on the basis of objects. Due to their high level of craftsmanship, aesthetics and forms, they were often highly appreciated, but were regarded and presented "as exotica or as remnants of earlier stages of human development"[15]. A handsome acquisition budget allowed Lessing, for example, to acquire "outstanding and exquisite pieces" at the Vienna Exhibition in 1873, to which "oriental [...] Works in metal and wood, carpets, thong barrels and tiles, which were brought to market in unprecedented abundance at very moderate prices as a result of the famine in Persia", as well as "purchases in the Indian and Japanese departments"[16]. In addition to artistic crafts, ethnological objects were increasingly added to the museum's collection in the early years, including wood carvings, works made of clay or glass beads, weaving and embroidery. This also applied to many other arts and crafts institutions. [17] As "signifiers of the pre-modern era"[18] (in contrast to the highly developed Western world), they were intended to offer stimuli through their form, color or material, as a statement by Lessing makes clear: "The art industry should again eavesdrop on the simplest products of the peoples [...] whose connection with the natural conditions of life has not yet been disturbed" [19 ].

As a result of the museum's increasing specialization and also in order to deal with the overabundance of exhibits, many of these objects, which were considered to be of ethnological rather than aesthetic-artistic relevance, were transferred to the Museum of Ethnology. In 1880, for example, Lessing clearly distinguished the collection profile of the Museum of Decorative Arts from its neighboring institution: "The Ethnographic Museum advocates works by barbarian and non-European peoples, so that works from this area [...] need not be collected with regard to representation and customs and habits, but only in a selection of pieces of arts and crafts." [20]

East Asian art and East Asian handicraft techniques exerted a particular fascination on museums of decorative arts. [21] In keeping with their great esteem, a separate museum room was dedicated to them in Berlin. [22] The wave of enthusiasm at the end of the 19th century, whose broad impact "went far beyond what was known from the exclusive chinoiseries of the Baroque and Rococo periods"[23], was directly related to the forced relocation of parts of the Imperial Chinese collection to the West. The looting of the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) by the British and French armies at the end of the Second Opium War in 1860, as well as the looting of the Forbidden City (and other imperial sites) after the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion by Allied forces in August 1900, had led to a flood of East Asian objects on the European art market. They found their way into a large number of European collections and led to increased public awareness. [24]

In addition to acquisitions at world exhibitions, more than two thousand objects from China and Japan (including textiles, porcelain, ceramics, glass, enamel works) from the extensive collection of Max von Brandt (1835–1920) came to the Kunstgewerbe-Museum. Brandt had selected and acquired these during his tenure as Prussian envoy in Beijing in China and Japan. [25]

The place for the presentation of special exhibitions and thus also non-European art was the atrium on the ground floor of the museum. On the occasion of the opening in 1881, an exhibition from Great Britain was shown. London's South Kensington Museum had loaned its Indian art collection, which included over a thousand objects "from the possessions of Her Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of India, the Duke of Edinburgh and high English art lovers"[26]. [27]

In addition, until the opening of the Ethnological Museum in 1885, two rooms were reserved for Heinrich Schliemann's so-called Treasure of Priam – consisting of valuable gold jewellery, vessels, weapons and tools as well as silver and bronze objects – which he mistakenly attributed to the legendary Trojan King Priam. [28] Schliemann had discovered the "treasure" in question in 1873 during excavations at Hisarlık Tepe (Palace Hill) in northwestern Asia Minor, then illegally exported it from the Ottoman Empire and thus attracted international attention. After a first public presentation in the South Kensington Museum, Schliemann handed over his find in 1878 "to the German people as a gift for eternal possession and unseparated storage in the imperial capital". [29] The rooms specially furnished by Schliemann and his wife were opened in the presence of Wilhelm II, who had a great penchant for excavations and antiquity and supported German archaeology with a lot of money. The emperor spent four million marks alone on excavation campaigns in Asia Minor. In doing so, he pursued a political and propaganda goal: "Germany was to occupy a leading position not only in the race for colonies and in naval construction, but also in archaeology [...]." [30] As planned from the outset, the treasure of Priam moved to the Ethnological Museum in 1885. [Fig. 5]

Three decades after the opening of the Museum of Decorative Arts, his collection left Kreuzberg and moved to the abandoned Berlin Palace of the Hohenzollerns in 1921 at the suggestion of the Ministry of Culture of the Weimar Republic. [31] The vacant premises at Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 7 were now used to exhibit parts of the Museum of Ethnology, which was suffering from a notorious lack of space, the Museum of Prehistory and Early History with its collection of antiquities, and the East Asian Art Collection founded in 1906 by Wilhelm von Bode (1845–1929), Director General of the Royal Museums in Berlin. [32]

Now called the Schlossmuseum, the Kunstgewerbe-Museum with its new location finally lost its function as a collection of models and patterns for craftsmen and tradesmen. Housed in one of the most important historical buildings in Berlin, it was now primarily an art museum that attracted a wide audience. [33]

During the Nazi era, the SS occupied the school building of the former Museum of Decorative Arts on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse and set up the command center of the Secret State Police there – today the Topography of Terror is located on the site. [34]

Severely destroyed in February 1945 during the bombing of the city centre, the museum building was threatened with demolition. An initiative by Walter Gropius, Martin Gropius' nephew, prevented this and caused the building to be listed in 1966. It was rebuilt between 1976 and 1981. [35]

Today, under the direction of the Berliner Festspiele, the Martin-Gropius-Bau serves as a house for major temporary exhibitions from the fields of modern and contemporary art, as well as archaeology and cultural history. [36]