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EXBERLINER MAGAZINE

CULTURE

The Best of Berlin in May

Exberliner, Berlin's leading English-language magazine, this month gets ready for its movie close-up in Babelsberg, fights for inner peace and squats the city.

Published: 17 May 2010 11:00 CEST
The Best of Berlin in May
Photo: DPA

Behind the scenes

Ever wondered where The Pianist, Sonnenallee and Inglorious Basterds were filmed? Or where Germany’s favourite soap opera, Gute Zeiten Schlechte Zeiten, takes place? Founded in 1911, Potsdam‘s Studio Babelsberg boasts a rich history of cinematic successes. The studios initially rose to fame with classics like Der blaue Engel, starring Marlene Dietrich, and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Now, Filmpark Babelsberg offers numerous cinema- themed attractions. Many of these are geared towards kids, but the park also hopes to appeal to cinephiles by offering insight into what goes on ‘behind the scenes’. Visitors can catch an animal show demonstrating how our furry friends are trained for film work, take a tour of the submarine set used for the film Hostile Waters, or amble along the “Straße der Giganten”, the park’s main boulevard lined with film and TV characters like King Kong and the Sandman. One of the Filmpark’s highlights is the stunt show, an action-packed display of flying motorcycles and men on fire. For a more mellow cinematic experience, head to the “Atelier die Traumwerker” to witness the creation of sets, costumes and makeup. With prices ranging from €13 (for children) to €20 (for adults), it’s best to make a day of it.

Filmpark Babelsberg | August-Bebel-Str. 26-53, Potsdam, S-Bhf Babelsberg, Tel 0331 7212 750, Mon-Sat 10-18, www.filmparkbabelsberg.de

Fighting for (inner) peace

Yoga’s definitely become too mainstream and you just can’t get your body around the pilates… but you still want to relax, tone your torso and improve your health? How about some Taijiquan (or “tai chi chuan”), the ancient Chinese martial art, which combines meditation and fighting techniques. It’s a discipline that attracts a variety of characters – lissom types in stylish sweats, the computer geek who never made the football team, and the butch girl you know could kick your ass. Those who are tired of female-dominated yoga classes can rejoice: with a 2/3 majority, you’ll find plenty of male company in Hannover-born Nabil Ranné’s class at the Kulturbrauerei. Nabil has practised taijiquan for 13 years and started teaching at the Kulturbrauerei’s Kampfkunstschule Madang last February. His small classes (about 10 students) provide a friendly and intimate atmosphere in the lofty studio space. Nabil practises Chen taijiquan, a style named after the family who created it. In his classes, taught in both English and German, he teaches the taijiquan forms. The ambitious can try to master “yilu”, the first form (it comprises 83 sequences), and “erlu”, the second form (which has 72). These consist of slow, concentrated movements that improve body strength while having a calming effect on the practitioner; more advanced students can use them for self-defense. Nabil says taijiquan functions as a “mirror of your own life”: your taijiquan skills will develop as your life progresses. Classes run once a week; they cost €30 a month for members of the Chen Stil Taijiquan Netzwerk Deutschland and €35 for everyone else.

Chen Stil Taijiquan | Kampfkunstschule Madang in der Kulturbrauerei, Schönhauser Allee 36-39, Hof 4/building 9.2, Prenzlauer Berg, U-Bhf Eberswalder Str., Tue 8-9:15, Tel 0179 2990 416, www.ctnd.de

SAVE BERLIN!

Diversity. Biodiversity. Sustainability. YAWN. (And well you might.) Such words start to swim before your eyes in a blurry pool of well-meaning meaningless. But wait! Pray read on! There are people on Planet Berlin who care for our urban environment! Who think deeply about why Berlin is special, what makes it different, and consider ways to maintain a high living quality on an economic (cheap) and sustainable (long-term) basis. Welcome to the happy-hippy spray-painted Lohmühle Trailer! When it takes up temporary residency in front of the Natural History Museum, this online blog station will be bedecked with anti-gentrification and other protest slogans – you will be able to write your own, and furthermore add comments about your ideas for keeping Berlin cool on the Lohmühle Laptops. For one day only, the city’s uninvolved, apolitical expats can connect to their habitat and contribute, in however small a way, their VISION of Berlin. It might even provide an amusing twist to the end of a night out, open all hours as it is. Friday night a “Themensalon” kicks off with talks about sustainability by clever people who will tell us how we should power the city, what we should eat and where we should live. SAVE BERLIN… and see you at the caravan, painting sheets and chatting squats!

DISAPPEARING DIVERSITY | Wagenburg Lohmühle, May 14-15, 14:00, Museum für Naturkunde, Invalidenstr. 43, Mitte, U-Bhf Naturkundemuseum, www.lohmuehle-berlin.de. Themensalon, May 14, 21:00, Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 43, Mitte, U-Bhf Brandenburger Tor, Tel 030 4737 2308, www.experimentcity.net

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DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

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