Museum Island (Museumsinsel)

Thursday 21 March 2013

Alte Nationalgalerie on Musemsinsel

With spring refusing to arrive in Berlin, we found ourselves dealing with a day of cold wind, snow and icy conditions underfoot.  This was the perfect day to spend inside and Museum Island was the perfect place to do just that.  Museum Island was classified by Unesco in 1999 to recognise the farsighted project to establish the museums in one place with each specifically designed for its content. Unesco link   The five museums on the island were built between 1824 and 1930, and we managed to visit three of them in one day

We started with the most beautiful woman in Berlin.  Queen Nefertiti is housed in the Neues Museum as the star attraction.  She is not here really, but there is a bust of her which is in remarkably good condition, colour and all, given that it is over 3,300 years old.  Photographs were not permitted, but if you are curious, you can see her at the museum’s home page Nefertiti Photo .  The photographs do not do her justice, and up close she really does look beautiful, with a long neck, dark eyes and a strong bone structure to the face.  Interestingly, small wrinkles under her eyes were visible on the sculpture, I am not sure they would be in a modern image- photoshoped out - and in that case we are the poorer. The exhibition around her was extensive celebrating the centenary of the discovery of the bust and the archaeology site that surrounded it.

Apart from the Queen, the most interesting exhibition displayed material that was recovered from what is considered to be "almost certainly" the site of Troy including an extraordinary headpiece known as the “Treasure of Priam” and a range of Trojan artefacts which look completely different from any of the ancient pieces I have seen which have usually been from Greece or Egypt.  Unfortunately, they haven’t found the Trojan horse.

There was also some great information on the archaeology of Berlin, making it a very worthwhile visit.

We moved on to the Bode-Museum, which has an excellent café. The key exhibit which overwhelms the visitor on entering the foyer is a bronze statue Fredrick the Great on his horse which is reminiscent of the statue of Louis XIV in front of Versailles and reminds us that they were great rivals for influence in Europe.  I think Freddy won, although Lew had a bigger statue.  He overshadowed everything in the museum including the statue of his Uncle, Frederic William, the Great Elector, without whose work, FTG would have struggled to develop the powerful state of Prussia.  Like Newton, he stood on the shoulders of giants.  Unlike Newton, he did not admit it. 

The other feature of the Bode-Museum (yes the name is hyphenated, don’t ask me why) was more “Virgin and Child’ pictures than I knew existed.  It became apparent that, in an age where art was almost required to be religious, the only way to have a picture of your son was to pose for a virgin and child portrait.  The girls did not make it.

There were also some other interesting works, particularly painted sculptures such as this sculpture pictured on the right and his friend pictured below, which featured painted plaster over the underlying stone, to give a lifelike effect.

We rounded off the afternoon at the Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery) where we viewed the early 20^th century German painters, and the art from the Romantic period, with lots of nature, castles by the sea and dark landscapes.

The highlight of the day was, for me, the buildings.  They were all constructed in the second half of the 19^th century at a time when Prussia was growing in nationalist feeling, and as a result sought to demonstrate its importance by building imposing buildings.  The other strong impression was the number of times the audio guide referred to the missing treasures which were taken to Moscow as war booty and not returned “in contravention of international law” and the references to lost works and artefacts which were destroyed in the bombing of Berlin in the last few weeks of the war. There was acknowledgement that if you start a war, you can’t expect pity but there was also an air of injustice in some of the commentary.  Personally, I don’t see which military objectives are met by the bombing of museums, but maybe I need more study in military strategy.

Across the road from Museum Island was the Berliner Dome pictured below.  It was closed, and in any event we were too cold and tired by 6pm to bother.