Karlsdorf and Munster

I took a ride out to Karlshorst on the afternoon of the 22nd. It's one of many sites dedicated to the war. Karlshorst is a quiet little borough in the former East, and other than a small market selling fresh fruit and fast food, there's not much else to see. After a long, warm walk, I arrived at the German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst. It's an unassuming building that once administered a school for German combat engineers. Between 1967 and 1994, however, it was known as the Museum of the Unconditional Surrender of Fascist Germany in the Great Patriotic War-- the Kapitulationsmuseum, for short.
In 1945, on the night of 8-9 May, the remaining representatives of the German military met with Allied field officers to sign the surrender documents ending the war in Europe. This building is as significant to the history of the World War as Appomattox Courthouse is to the American Civil War. For a long time after that, it served as the headquarters of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany.
SOVIET TRIUMPHALISM: 1967-1988
For almost three decades, the museum told a heroic, triumphalist story of the war. This was during the first years of Brezhnev's Secretariat, and the Communists increasingly relied on nationalism and patriotism to maintain unity in the Soviet Union. It was also around this time that the 5-cycle film series Liberation appeared in theaters throughout the Eastern Bloc. (I've posted  a clip of the film as well--it's about 10 minutes long--look for the characterization of the Russian soldiers, a tougher, more fearless, more humane bunch of warriors you'll never see... )



However, since 1989 and especially since 1990, it was clear that the Museum would soon belong to Germany. Incredibly, the Germans and Russians decided early in the process to create a totally bi-national museum. It's a truly collective historical event, and deserved a collective response. All the text is in (only) German and Russian, and I was fortunate that I know enough of the latter language to pick out familiar words in context.
MISSION ESTABLISHED IN THE LENIN SAAL
The old museum's mission was "to encourage a feeling of soviet patriotism and proletarian internationalism" as well as "propagating the soviet way of life, the freedom-loving policies of the Communist Party of the USSR and the soviet government, international education, strengthening of friendship and collective work with the producers of the GDR, and military brotherhood with the forces of the National People's Army of the GDR". In short, the museum served a deeply political purpose. The displays were intended to evoke emotional responses, especially for Russian soldiers who were the intended visitors. "The soviet victory represents the achievements of a fighting morality, that of the spirit of Lenin, which soviet soldiers allowed to shape all their actions." This attitude was represented visually as well. Originally, the first hallway was the "Lenin-Hall" and provided a history of Lenin and socialism, rather than addressing the war itself.
MUSEUM AGAINST WAR
The new museum is, instead, clearly intended as a "museum against war". With an eye firmly set on depicting historical truth as closely as possible, Russian and German curators determined that "neither war nor victory should be heroicized; rather this war would have to be shown in all of its horror". The museum would no longer be a "Ruhmeshalle" or Hall of Honor to the Red Army.
Just how complicated such a process could have been is easy to imagine. Most likely, a long tradition of explicitly articulated pacifist ideals, combined with years of German Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung (grappling with the past) allowed both parties to embrace the idea. When one considers how controversial the Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian was in the mid-90s, or how terrifically controversial Tom Hank's comments about his miniseries, The Pacific have been, the speed with which Germans and Russians arrived at a common vision is impressive.
HIGHLIGHTS
A multimedia set-up. This American college student isn't getting much from it, as none of the kids on the tour spoke German, but whatever. I listened to Himmler's Posener speech from '43 where he acknowledges the extermination of the Jews. I didn't realize that it actually existed in recorded form!

Visually, there was also much to offer. There were some truly unique artifacts, like the straw boots that German soldiers had to wear to survive the winter in Stalingrad, or the chess pieces carved by German prisoners of war. You'll note that the white pieces are farmers (pawns), Red Army soldiers (bishops), and a worker (king) while the black pieces depict bourgeoisie (pawns), factory owners (bishops) and the Czar (king).Finally, there were plenty of artifacts pointing to the horror of war. Childrens' shoes from Treblinka, for example, or these notes from a doctor in the Charite Hospital in Berlin confronted with multiple cases of rape perpetrated by soviet troops.

TANKS, TANKS, AND ONLY TANKS

All of this was in stark contrast to the Tank Museum at Munster. Certainly, the museum curators sought to address some of the larger implications of war. However, there were only a handful of textual commentaries on the walls, with titles such as "Wartime Fates (of individual soldiers/their loved ones) or "Flight and Displacement (Vertreibung)". Also, the war in Russia was correctly identified as a Vernichtungskreig (war of annihilation)--important background to placing the war in context. At the end of the tour, I asked a woman in the gift shop if they had any literature about the museum (Karlshorst had a great text that included a discussion of the creation and purpose of the museum). It was telling that they had a book that did little more than list the vehicles and pair them with a set of mechanical statistics. Ultimately, the museum is a collection of artifacts rather than an attempt to further come to terms with history, and in that sense it stands out as unique during this trip.

Here's a special "see-through" tank used in the East German army to train troops. I must admit, it was pretty cool.