The Museums in Tempelhof-Schöneberg
Tempelhof-Schöneberg is an inner city district in Berlin with 330 000 inhabitants.
Two local museums are located here: the Tempelhof Museum in the part of town known as Alt-Mariendorf and the Schöneberg Museum, located in the heart of Schöneberg, with its affiliated Young People's Museum. The Schöneberg Museum holds the common archive which preserves the historical collections that have been acquired for decades.
Both museums view themselves as dynamic historical museums for all generations and offer a diverse program on regional history and city culture.
What we offer:
Indoor and outdoor exhibits,
Books,
Parties,
Research,
Tours,
On-Site History,
Intercultural Activities,
Job Trainings,
Concerts,
Readings,
Media,
Projects,
Collections,
City Walks,
Workshops,
Discussions with eyewitnesses of historical events
Tempelhof Museum
The House
The Tempelhof Museum is located in an old school house in the former central part of the village named Alt-Mariendorf.
An attractive cultural site has been created in this historical setting with a permanent exhibit on the history of Tempelhof and an appealing program.
This includes temporary thematic exhibits in the museum and city surroundings, encounters with participants of historical events, discussions, city walks, readings, and lectures. The Tempelhof Museum cooperates with schools and other institutions in the district. We offer tours and projects for school classes and groups upon request.
Permanent Exhibit
In an attractive arrangement of rooms, our new permanent exhibit reflects the regional particularities of Tempelhof and its four districts,
Alt-Tempelhof, Alt-Mariendorf, Marienfelde, and Lichtenrade. The spectrum of themes it offers spans from "the church in the town" to "cathedrals of industrial work", from living, free-time and amusement to forced work and opposition during National Socialism. The lives and work of people - enhanced through aspects of city development and cultural history - make up the primary focus of the exhibit.
Numerous exhibits and "stories" make up a kaleidoscope of memory of people, locations, and histories.
Schöneberg Museum
The House
The Schöneberg Museum is located in a villa from the 1870s in the historical center of Schöneberg. Temporary exhibits on the city's history and cultural history are shown here. They focus on individual city quarters - ranging from the neighborhood Friedenau to the North of Schöneberg - and historical and political topics such as the exciting history of bandits from 1810 who set fire in cities and villages in order to steal or the women's movement in the 19th and 20th century. We also recognize days of commemoration and anniversaries such as the founding of Schöneberg in 1898 or the end of World War Two in 1945.
According to the topic, the high rooms on the Bel floor are continually presented to the visitor in a new way: sometimes as a secret darkroom of the past, sometimes bright and clear for the exact view of the present. Or as an intercultural labryrinth ...
But we also gladly leave the site of our museum and present our research results to the outside. On-site history: at public places, cemeteries, the town hall, schools and cafes...
Activities
Our program supports active historical research and a dialogue between the past and present. We research, publish, and organize readings, concerts, and conferences. We invite the public to participate in city walks and to attend discussions with eye-witnesses of historical events. Furthermore, we provide various media that help to teach history as well as exciting educational offerings on museums.
We view ourselves as part of a regional network and as a source of contact for local initiatives that deal with historical and current questions regarding city culture and development.
Jugend Museum
The Building
Since 1995, the "Million Villa", located on Haupt street, has had a special attraction for young people: the Young People's Museum in the Schöneberg Museum. Through careful work, exhibit and workshop rooms have developed here, in which not only children and youth feel at ease.
The Young People's Museum invites visitors to experiment and promotes the desire to discover things on one's own. Using Schöneberg as an example, the Young People's Museum encourages its guests to get to know the history of the city and to perceive its environment with a new perspective.
Activities
The permanent program of the Young People's Museum offers exhibits, projects, history workshops, artistic workshops, competitions and city explorations. Furthermore, we offer trainings and seminars in the area of museum pedagogy for educators and others who are interested.
The Room of Miracles The Box of Miracles
The heart of the Young People's Museum is the permanent exhibit "The Room of Miracles-The Box of Miracles" in the yellow rooms. This exhibit was granted the Children's Cultural Prize in 1999 from the Kroschke foundation.
54 high transport boxes show findings and treasures of various areas of city history and culture with precious, miraculous or everyday qualities. Displayed as a miracle box, they invite the visitor to decipher the language of things. Authentic objects, ranging from Germanic sacrificial cows to Barbie, awaken a detective feel for the exploration of the past and present. But not all things reveal their secrets easily. Those who have become curious can go down to the basement rooms of the museum.
WUNDERKAMMERN
The permanent exhibition "Wunderkammern-Wunderkisten in den Gelben Räumen und im Keller" (Amazing Cabinets and Chests in the Yellow Rooms and in the Cellar) was opened in May 1997 and is due to run until the year 2002. The purpose behind the exhibition is to make more accessible the idea of a museum to children and young people from all social and cultural backgrounds.
The bright yellow rooms on the ground floor contain an intriguing layout of 54 numbered chests (2 x 1 x0,5 metre) each containing a selection of themed objects; some precious and rare, some unusual, some everyday, ordinary articles; some relating to the distant past, some to the past of living memory, some to the present¸ some dealing with historical or political issues, some dealing with social or more sensitive issues; some dealing with life as it was, some with life as it is today; some with the multiculturality of Berlin. Within the boxes is a wealth of fascinating detail and some textual information - the stimulus to further exploration which is carried out in the cellar. Here are other yellow boxes with relevant objects to be touched and tried, clothes to dress up in, reference material in card index format to examine. Elsewhere there is the white room: the workshop equipped with tools and materials for painting and for making models, for developing exhibition displays.
A school class visit is for five hours and starts with the dramatic introduction when the group is transported to the year 2099 and meets a woman from that future era who is having problems making sense of a box of ordinary objects from 1999. The children help her understand. Then they have time to explore the 54 yellow chests freely before dividing into four small groups, each with a member of the museum staff, and selecting their own topic for research and exploration. They use the appropriate box from the cellar, using the reference material, looking again at the yellow chest exhibition and prepare some form of project report, display, picture or model.
The Museum offers written "instructions for use" and a coloured map for visitors coming in the afternoon, so that eyerybody can explore the exhibition by himself.
The Historical Archive of Tempelhof and Schöneberg
Our historical archive serves as the basis for our museum work. Here, historical documents are collected and preserved, researched and communicated. The collection includes authentic objects of everyday history and cultural history, a collection of paintings, historical photographs and picture postcards, current photographs, maps and plans of city development from the 19th and 20th centuries, newspapers on regional history starting from 1860, and numerous documents on the history of both city districts.
The thematical focus of the collections include: country life and village history, city planning and development, trade, industry, National Socialism and the persecution of Jews, the post-World War Two era, women's history, school history, the history of children and youth, and migration history.
The archive - with its extensive library on regional history and the history of Berlin - is open to all those interested. We offer archive tours and projects for schools upon request.
