Regional Museum Academy-2019

Military History Museum

17 October 2019

Dresden, Military History Museum.

The most important part of the Regional Museum Academy-2019 was a four-day trip of a group of Belarusian museum specialists to Germany. The main purpose of the trip was to visit German museums and exchange experiences with German colleagues. The training seminar at the Military History Museum (Militärhistorisches Museum) took place on October 17, 2019. This event, like the entire German program, was organized by Dr. Kristiane Janeke, Director of the Tradicia History Service (Berlin).

Acquaintance with the Dresden Military History Museum took the form of a detailed tour, which dealt with several topics: the approach to creating a historical museum; relationship between history and politics; memory of the war; decoration of the exposition.

Meeting with Dr. Armin Wagner, director of the Military History Museum, gave a group of trainees from Belarus an opportunity to share their impressions and ask questions at the end of the training meeting.

Photo - A. Dukhovnikov (1st from the left), the rest - T. Bembel.

A group of trainees of the Regional Museum Academy-2019 in front of the main facade of the Military History Museum in Dresden. The photograph shows how the neoclassical order of the original 1877 façade is pierced by a sharpened steel and glass "splinter" - an extension to the old building, made in 2011 by American architect Daniel Libeskind.

The interior space of the Military History Museum in the new extension of 2011 provides unexpected opportunities for the arrangement of exhibits in space. Both the architectural concept and the museum exposition are aimed at versatile interpretation and rethinking of the usual visual perception.

The expositions in the new extension are not subject to the chronological principle, displaying various and somewhat unexpected aspects of military history - for example, "War and the Game", where the perception of the war is given through the richest collection of children's toys.

During the acquaintance of a group of trainees with sections of the exposition, much attention was paid to how to facilitate access to military history for visitors who are still little familiar with military topics.

In the interiors of the three wings of the historic building there is a chronologically arranged tour of the military history of Germany.

The exposition provides an opportunity to get acquainted with the details of the military history of a particular era in such aspects as the economy of wars, the relationship between military structures and society, as well as the consequences of wars for a person in the form of injuries and death.

The path through the epochs of German military history passes along ten main showcases that reflect the central episodes of this history. A display case dedicated to World War II depicts the actions of the main war criminals of Nazi Germany. This stand tells about G.Goering.

The history of the division and reunification of Germany after the Second World War is closely connected with the theme of the confrontation of a divided world during the Cold War. The system of control and punishment is part of the history of wars.

After an in-depth tour of the museum, the Director of the Military History Museum, Dr. Armin Wagner, told a group of trainees from Belarus about the concept of the museum and the principles of its work, and also answered questions.

A group of trainees from Belarus, like most visitors to the Military History Museum, got to it and went back to the center of Dresden by tram. The stop is called Stauffenbergallee in honor of Wehrmacht Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg, who led the unsuccessful attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944 and was executed for this on July 21, 1944.

For a group of trainees from Belarus, much of what they saw in one of the most interesting military-themed museums in the world was quite unusual. An important result was the understanding of what is the main theme of the central exposition of the Military History Museum: it is not so much the war itself, with all the richness and diversity of the exposition material and funds, but the person in the war and how the war affects him. “This project is not about weapons and missiles. It is about people and their decisions, about how they see this world,” said architect D. Libeskind when he won the competition for the museum expansion project in 2001.

The renovated museum, together with the annex, has become not only a repository of colossal material about the war and military history, but also a monument dedicated to the tragic events of the last days of World War II. This is a memory not only of fascism, of the Third Reich, but also of one of the most cold-blooded political decisions of the anti-Hitler coalition, when, shortly before the signing of Germany's surrender, Dresden was turned into ruins as a result of allied air raids, burying under it, according to rough estimates, 135 000 civilians residents. The memory of the war can be very different, and how it is interpreted in museum expositions largely depends on museum workers. In fact, museums form the image of the war for society, and the awareness of the complexity and responsibility of this work was one of the results of the class at the Military History Museum in Dresden.

More photos of the event

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Material preparation — Tatiana Bembel