TOPPING OUT CEREMONY FOR DRESDEN’S MILITARY HISTORY MUSEUM

Daniel Libeskind On Hand to Celebrate Dresden’s Largest Museum Planned for 2010

Dresden, Germany (October 6, 2008) – Today the Daniel Libeskind-designed Military History Museum celebrated its topping out ceremony in Dresden, Germany.  There to admire the completion of the museum’s external structure with the customary wreath were architect Daniel Libeskind, German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung and Minister of Saxony, Stanislaw Tillich.  Set to open in 2010, the Military History Museum will become the official central museum of the German Armed Forces and will house an exhibition area amounting to around 20,000 square meters, becoming Dresden’s largest museum. 

The design of the Military History Museum features an architectural incision into the old German arsenal building, which sits on the northern outskirts of Dresden.  This vast wedge-shaped structure made of concrete, steel and glass projects from the old Neo-Classical building, pointing like an arrow towards the old city center.  The wedge cuts through the structural order of the arsenal, giving the museum a place for reflection about organized conflict and violence.  This creates an objective view to the continuity of military conflicts and opens up vistas to central anthropological questioning.

Through the examination of not only the governmental but also the social implementation of the history of violence, the Museum details German military history and the military history of the German Democratic Republic, through collections of tin soldiers; tanks, uniforms, weapons of relations and the first German U-boot.  The Military History Museum is about those who went into the war and those who have remained at home; people of different eras; people of different generations – it is about the human being.  It approaches people of all ages and interests, from all Dresdeners to visitors abroad.  The new extension gives a fundamental re-orientation to the existing building.  It opens up the view to the historical center of Dresden and soars above the roof of the existing building, showing the modernization to the outside world while offering the opportunity to experience the opening to the city. 

The new façade is being conceived against the background of the existing arsenal building, in response and in contrast to it. The openness and transparency of the new façade stands against the opacity and solidity of the old façade.  As one represents the severity of the authoritarian past in which it was built, the other reflects the openness of a democratic society and the changed role of its military. “It is a dialogue between old and new,” said Libeskind, referring to this inherent conflict in the building.  In the new elevation of the Museum both are visible at the same time and one through the other. This correlation corresponds to the juxtaposition of new and old in the building’s interior: The rigid column grid of the old Arsenal is contrasted with a new column free space. The interplay of both together forms the character of the new Military History Museum.

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