Museum Tour
Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum of the Present
Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart
Invalidenstraße 50-51
10557 Berlin
The Hamburger Bahnhof building, the façade of which is highlighted by a blue neon installation that can be seen from the distance, has a longer history as a museum than a railway station. Erected to designs by Friedrich Neuhaus and Ferdinand Wilhelm Holz between 1845 and 1847, it constituted the head building of the Berlin-Hamburg Railway Association. It became a model for many of the later railway structures. The centre tract is enhanced by two large round-arched portals through which locomotives reached the present courtyard area containing the turntable.
Because its four tracks were unable to cope with the traffic volume, the station was abandoned in 1884 and its rail traffic to and from Hamburg taken over by Lehrter Railway Station, which had been completed in 1871.
The central hall was extended to contain the Museum of Traffic and Building, which opened in 1906. Two new wings, added between 1911 and 1916 to designs by city building director Schwarz, completed the form of the ceremonial courtyard.
Although it became the property of the East German Reichsbahn after the Second World War, the building itself was located in West Berlin and accessible to the British Forces only. It was taken over by the Senate in 1984 and used for temporary exhibitions before a competition was announced for the reconstruction of the museum in 1989. The building was refurbished from 1993 to 1996 to plans by Josef Paul Kleihues, who won the competition. Kleihues suggested extending the existing hall by lengthy galleries down the sides, only one of which to the east was realized.
A new home for the collection of industrialist and billionaire Friedrich Christian Flick is located at the Rieck Halls on the west side of the site at the former warehouse premises of the Rieck removal firm. The 250 metre long brick building was refurbished to designs by the architectural offices of Kühn Malvezzi. The refurbishment was financed by Flick, while the Association of Friends of the National Gallery funded the connecting structure to Hamburger Bahnhof.
Opened in 1996, the Museum of the Present displays stocks contributed by the New National Gallery, which have been extended by works from the private collections of Erich Marx and (as of 2004) Friedrich Flick. Works by Warhol, Twombly, Rauschenberg, Lichtentstein, Kiefer, Beuys, Mondrian, Schwitters, Duchamp, Giacometti, Nauman, Polke and Nam June Paik form the core of the collections.
Further information:
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Images:
Landesarchiv Berlin (2)
Landesarchiv Berlin / Stefane Jacob
Landesarchiv Berlin / Barbara Esch-Marowski (2)
Ulrich Schwarz, Berlin
Oltmann Reuter
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