The Great Variety Of Museums : Germany

The broad regional distribution of Germany’s museums makes them accessible to large numbers of people. There is no central government “museum policy”, but museums cooperate with one another in a number of fields, such as restoration and museum security, central documentation and research. These joint activities are coordinated by the Federation of German Museums, established in 1917, to which all Germany’s museums belong. The Institut fur Museumskunde of the State Museums of Prussian Cultural Heritage in Berlin has similar duties.

Museum architecture, too, shows great variety, ranging from the 19th century art “temples” to such spectacular examples of ultra-modern architecture as the New State Gallery in Stuttgart or the German Architecture Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt am Main. Many museums were destroyed during World War II, but most of their collections were stored in safe places. The traces of war damage still have not been completely eliminated. It took over 30 years, for instance, before a new, modern building could be constructed for Munich’s Neue Pinakothek to replace the original museum demolished during the war.
The new partnership between museums in the Federal Republic of Germany and those in the Eastern European countries is already bearing fruit. In March 1993, for example, some 150 works of art which had been carried off during World War II were returned to Bremen’s Kunsthalle.