German Historical Museum

Deutsches Historisches Museum

The Zeughaus or armoury, which today houses the German Historical Museum, is Berlin's largest preserved baroque structure. Four master builders worked on the royal armoury between 1695 and 1706. The first, Arnold Nering, died shortly after the foundation stone was laid, his successor Martin Grünberg resigned in 1698; the third, Andreas Schlüter, who created the renowned masks of dying warriors, was relieved of his post when the attica collapsed as a result of a structural miscalculation. The building was finally completed by Jean de Bodt - for the moment.

In 1877, Friedrich Hitzig delivered plans for the reconstruction of the Zeughaus to a Prussian Hall of Fame with a military museum. In 1952, the leadership of the GDR commissioned Otto Haesler with the restoration and remodelling of the building as a Museum of German History.

The German Historical Museum was launched with an opening ceremony in the Reichstag building in the west part of the city in 1987. At the time, there were plans for a new museum building around the area of the Reichstag building. Architect Aldo Rossi won the competition that was announced in 1988. When the Berlin Wall collapsed, the situation changed: the site was now required for the new chancellory building.

In 1990, the German Historical Museum took over the GDR Museum of German History and with it, the Zeughaus. The façade was restored between 1994 and 1998 and its former yellow coat replaced by the historically authentic pink tone.

Ex-Chancellor Kohl commissioned Gropius pupil and creator of the glass pyramid at the Louvre in Paris, Ieoh Ming Pei, to design an extension on the north side. Pei and his German architectural contact offices of Eller + Eller produced plans for a closed structure on a triangular groundplan. A four-storey glazed foyer with a glass winding staircase was placed in front of the stone building on the south side and is linked to the main building by a subterranean passageway.

The interior courtyard has now been covered over - as in Hitzig's design from 1877. Pei developed the filigree glass roofing in cooperation with the Stuttgart engineering offices of Schlaich, Bergermann and Partner. Construction began in 1998 and the new extension was dedicated in 2003 with the first temporary exhibition. The Schlüter courtyard was reopened to the public in April 2004.