The Wall Museum, Wall and Cold War museum in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany
The Wall Museum is a private museum in Berlin's Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district, on the bank of the Spree, housed in a former mill warehouse whose roof served as a GDR border watchtower. Its permanent exhibition runs through 13 themed rooms covering the Berlin Wall, the Cold War and the division of Germany from 1961 to 1990, built on filmed original footage and audiovisual witness accounts.
The museum opened in March 2016, with a preview in October 2015 where Ai Weiwei signed a piece of the Berlin Wall. Its welcome address was provided by Mikhail Gorbachev. The roof of the former mill warehouse served as a GDR border watchtower.
The exhibition is built on testimony: curator interviews with Mikhail Gorbachev, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Miklós Németh, James Baker, Helmut Kohl and Willy Brandt, plus GDR civil rights activists. Stanislaw Petrow recounts how in 1983 he ignored a false alarm instead of ordering a nuclear counterstrike. Harald Jäger, who opened the Bornholmer Strasse crossing on 9 November 1989, is among the interviewees.
The museum is in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, on the bank of the Spree, not in Mitte. The exhibition runs through 13 themed rooms, so allow time to follow them in order. The building is a former mill warehouse whose roof served as a GDR border watchtower.
The welcome address shown at the entrance was provided by Mikhail Gorbachev, who warns in it of the threat of a nuclear third world war at the time of the division. The museum also recounts how Stanislav Petrov averted a nuclear exchange in 1983 by not passing on a false alarm.
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