The Humboldt Forum in Berlin is a new kind of museum

By Fiammetta Rocco: culture correspondent, The Economist and 1843

THE HUGE building site that stretches across the midriff of Berlin’s Museum Island has been a meadow, a parade ground, a Dominican monastery, a Prussian palace under the Hohenzollerns in the 1700s and, after 1945, the East German parliament known as the Palace of the Republic. In 2021 it will reopen to the public in yet another incarnation: the Humboldt Forum, a giant cultural centre that wraps a painstakingly reconstructed historical façade around a series of climate-controlled ultra-modern exhibition galleries.

Like many big civil construction projects around the world, the Humboldt Forum has suffered from delays and cost-overruns; the latest estimate is that it will cost €644m ($763m). The pandemic has not helped. Other museums that had to postpone their openings to 2021 include the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, M+ in Hong Kong and the Xi Art Museum, an open-air exhibition space in Jiangxi province in south-east China. Some, such as the Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi, will now not open until at least 2022.

When the idea of replacing the nearly derelict East German parliament with a replica of the elegant Hohenzollern palace was first being seriously discussed in the early 2000s, it seemed a beguiling prospect. The new building would offer a home to Berlin’s collections of Asian art and ethnology, as well as the city’s library, the municipal museum and the Humboldt University. In doing so, it would cement Berlin’s identity as an outward-looking cultural hub embodying all the ideas of the German Enlightenment, as represented by the Prussian von Humboldt brothers: Alexander, an explorer and polymath, who lived until 1859, and Wilhelm, a philosopher, who died in 1835.

It would be a universal museum, like the British Museum (BM) or the Hermitage in St Petersburg—and more. “It would remake the heart of Berlin,” says Neil MacGregor, former director of the BM who chaired the advisory committee that set up the Forum. “Because you already have Greece, Rome, the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia…bringing Africa, Oceania, the Americas and the Asian art collection together would complete the representation of the world’s civilisations.”

With political parties from the left and the right all laying claim to the Forum, the project was subject to intense political debate. But over the years it has also become embroiled in a series of controversies that are all its own. Many regarded the plan as a piece of West German political triumphalism. Former East Germans were dismayed at the tearing down of the Palace of the Republic. It may never have constituted a real parliament, but many Ossis remembered its discos and bowling alley fondly. Others saw putting up a replica of an 18th-century building as a way to gloss over the Nazi period, while still paying homage to the militaristic Prussians. And those hoping that it would transcend political, nationalist and religious boundaries were shocked to see a Christian cross—also a symbol of Prussian power—being hoisted onto the roof last May, above a Christian inscription composed by Friedrich Wilhelm IV, a Prussian king.

The biggest controversy concerns its ethnological collections, particularly those from Africa. Germany has made great strides in returning art works seized during the Nazi period, but has paid scant attention to items looted, or acquired by force, during its African colonial period. Debate over restitution to Africa has become increasingly vocal in other countries in recent years, especially France and the Netherlands, drawing attention to Germany’s silence about the genocide it perpetrated in what is now Namibia, and the looting that accompanied it. “This is really a big problem in Germany,” says Jürgen Zimmerer, founding president of the International Network of Genocide Scholars at Hamburg University.

But these controversies might yet be transformed into opportunities. Germany’s experience as a federal state, which manages by consensus, should inspire the Humboldt Forum to become a great centre of cultural debate. Provenance, restitution, curating as a form of cultural power, the future of universal museums—these are all topics that urgently demand dialogue between former colonial powers and the countries they once ruled. The Humboldt Forum could lead the way.

Fiammetta Rocco: culture correspondent, The Economist and 1843 ■

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition of The World in 2021 under the headline “Building a new type of museum”