The new temporary region for the Werkbund archive has been determined

There are few museums in Berlin that arouse as an awful lot curiosity as the Museum der Dinge – Werkbundarchiv in Oranienstrasse. Hundreds of objects stand facet by facet in simple cabinets, absolutely without the difference among “excessive” and “famous” this is so vital in German cultural lifestyle. Exquisite layout from the imperial generation and the various present day ones, from the GDR and the Federal Republic, are on display right here, but also splendidly crazy vacationer souvenirs (what matters can do with the Mona Lisa…), the Covid 19 series, toys.

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On Friday, however, this museum with greater than 20,000 gadgets and a big collection of documents might be closed. The owner of the house, a Luxembourg actual property fund, desires to be able to rent the residence more expensively. Even this instructional organization, that's celebrating its fiftieth anniversary on Friday, is not safe from the nefarious greed for gentrification this is now hugely threatening Berlin’s cultural global.

What turns into of the Museum der Dinge now?

It has been promised for years that a brand new constructing within the shape of 1 of these pavilions that have been planned there because the 1960s would be the new home on Karl-Marx-Allee. Not an smooth leap for this institution of lived pluralism; it doesn’t go to West Berlin’s Hansaviertel, that is deeply inspired by means of Werkbund individualism, but to East Berlin’s Karl-Marx-Allee, a symbol of the GDR’s anti-individualist architectural doctrine.

But you want to dare it, the soar – however to date there have only been many announcements and sketches. From the housing affiliation WBM Mitte to the constructing management and the preservation of monuments, which has recently been subordinated to it, to the subculture senator, many positions ought to be tied collectively here. It takes lots of electricity, and at some point cash. That there's less and less.

After all: Immediately before this text changed into finished, the brand new culture senator Chialo had the Tagesspiegel informed on request: The Museum der Dinge – Werkbundarchiv will have to preserve maximum of its collections in a depot within the medium time period. For the time being, but, it can hold its exhibitions and its work on Leipziger Strasse. The introduced establishing date is next fall.

New layout for a new society

The Werkbund was founded in 1907 in Munich, the German capital of art at the time, as a form of manner out of the decadent and elitist “Art Nouveau” and the past due historicism of the Imperial length, which became visible as old and feudal.

Industrialists, craftsmen, producers, artists and writers on artwork, architects and designers, inclusive of conservative and liberal reformers, however also avant-gardists wanted to give form to the new, business society with new designs. But new markets for the German economic system had been also to be conquered – the Werkbund usually had a completely country wide side, in addition to the declare of being able to reform society as an entire via design.

Full showcases within the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge. On the shelves there may be kitsch and reasonably-priced items subsequent to remarkable crockery and clothier goods.

© Armin Herrmann/ Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge

It skilled its first heyday in the past due Imperial period and the Weimar Republic with conferences, the magazine “Die Form”, and across the world influential exhibitions inclusive of in Cologne, Breslau and Stuttgart. But the Werkbund additionally failed in 1933 inside the face of the civilizational assignment posed via the Nazis and dissolved itself in 1938.

After all, it turned into no longer completely a part of National Socialist cultural coverage, however turned into the first kingdom affiliation to be re-set up in Saxony in 1945. Other new foundations quickly observed, in 1949 in Darmstadt that of the brand new federal association. It changed into not least the first Federal President, Theodor Heuss, who turned into Managing Director of the Deutscher Werkbund from 1919 to 1933, who intensively promoted this renaissance.

Private association initiative

The Werkbund have become the benchmark for the design of goods and everyday existence, particularly within the old Federal Republic. He posted the layout mag “werk und zeit” (systematically lower case changed into nearly a distinguishing function of the Werkbund) or the “Rat für Formbildung” set up in 1953.

In 1972, what is now the Museum der Dinge turned into created with the aid of a private association in West Berlin, initially only as a “Werkbundarchiv”. Above all, it was supposed to deliver together the historical past of the Deutscher Werkbund, founded in 1907, similarly to the Kunstgewerbemuseum, which had failed miserably in accumulating cutting-edge design cultures on the grounds that 1919, and the Bauhaus Archive, founded in Darmstadt in 1960 and relocated to West Berlin in 1971, with its avant-garde cognizance and the non-public Bröhan Museum for Art Nouveau Art, opened in 1973.

But whilst the Werkbund archive opened its doors in 1973 – this fiftieth anniversary might be celebrated on Friday with a convention and birthday party in Oranienstrasse – the association’s second heyday become already over.

Shapes are a part of cultural records

Younger designers in particular criticized the pathos of the founding fathers in cultural training: It wasn’t just about “true form” – that changed into the call of a prize provided by means of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology and the Werkbund between 1969 and 2001. Good design has some thing to do with strength and production members of the family, with social, monetary and cultural situations. The Werkbundarchiv for that reason suggests that paperwork are part of cultural records, an man or woman cultural decision and then additionally an economic act.

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Therefore: reasonably-priced design, realistic folding chairs and “kitsch” next to extraordinary Mono A cutlery, Rosenthal crockery and Braun radios. In 1999, the call become changed to “Museum der Dinge – Werkbundarchiv” to suggest the expansion of the Werkbund fable.

The announced interim zone on Leipziger Strasse might genuinely best be an emergency solution – which, furthermore, have to in no way be allowed to solidify, as is normal for Berlin. But nonetheless: Better than for this museum, which is also the world over distinctly appeared precisely due to its socio-crucial role, to vanish absolutely from Berlin’s educational landscape for years or maybe many years, just like the collections inside the Pergamon Museum.