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18th Long Night of the Museums

Between War and Peace

Berlin commemorates the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II with a variety of exhibitions this year, displaying not only the destruction left behind by the NS-Regime in its own country but also the surprising strength of those who survived the horror and dared to start a new beginning.

The Long Night of the Museums will give you an idea of what happened in those uncertain times between the end of the war and the beginning of peace after the opening of the Iron Curtain: for example in the Deutsche Historische Museum (German Historical Museum), in the Museum für Europäische Kulturen (Museum of European Cultures), from which special exhibition the cover picture of the boy in the rubbles of the Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery) was taken as well as in the evokative exhibition in the Schöneberg Museum.

The history of the city in the past 60 years - destruction, separation, construction, reunification - all of this is represented in an impressive way in the story of the museums of Berlin. And so this 18th Long Night of the Museums gives the visitors again the chance to explore the familiar and already established as well as the unknown and unexpected in more than a hundred participating museums and cultural institutions.

New participants besides the Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz (House of the Wannsee Conference) and the Bruno-Paul-Bau in Dahlem are the striking Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts) at Pariser Platz and the "Ort der Information" des Denkmals für die ermordeten Juden Europas (Information Center of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Europe).

In a different location the Long Night will go even further back in the history of Berlin: 300 years ago Friedrich I. - the Prussian King changed the name of the small village of Lietzenburg outside the city into "Charlottenburg" in honour of his late wife. The adequate occasion for an invitation to Schloss Charlottenburg (Charlottenburg Palace) celebrating a "Summerly Serenade" in an exclusive baroque style.

A hundred years of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and a hundred years artist colony "Brücke": Two more anniversaries worth paying attention to at the Long Night of the Museums: Einstein is well remembered in an exhibition at Centrum Judaicum and in the Kronprinzenpalais and "Brücke" can be admired in the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery), Berlinische Galerie (Berlin Museum of Contemporary Art, Photography and Architecture) and- of course - in the Brücke-Museum.

The detailed program leaflets (only in German) as well as the tickets (12€/8€, children under 12 enter free) are available in all the participating museums, at box offices, at Museumspädagogischer Dienst Berlin and via www.ticketonline.de. The holder of the ticket is entitled to visit all the participating museums and institutions, to use the shuttle buses running between the venues and public transport in the tariff zone ABC. For additional information contact MD infoline (+49(0)30/90 26 99 444) or visit www.lange-nacht-der-museen.de.