By Natalia Chairez and Aspasia Falki
Berlin is home to a melting pot of Germany’s most recognizable historical events, including being the capital of the Cold War from 1947 to the infamous fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The grounds we walk on in the country hold so much from the past that it leaves no excess of memoirs and museums to commemorate and acknowledge it all. Even with those museums, history still manages to get lost with time and the growth of younger generations disconnecting with the past.
Eventually, the people of Berlin realized this. They’ve also realized the shift in younger people’s way of connecting to how they learn things. Many museums and memoirs in the city have been built throughout the years to appeal to a general demographic of people who are eager to learn more about history in general. However, one of the biggest things that inevitably brings young people together when consuming material and real events is technology. Digitized platforms from the future to bring back the past in a way for younger people to understand their elders. With digitized platforms comes some of the world’s most advanced ways of telling a story that we’ve seen in the 21st century; interactiveness.
The Cold War Museum on Unter der Linden was founded by Carsten Kollmeier and opened its doors to the public on Nov. 26, 2022. Over 2 years ago, he’d noticed Berlin’s need for a museum that encompassed the Cold War as a whole. This digitalized and modernized technology haven has been modified and curated by the museum’s curator team since its opening to ensure its accessibility to all types of audiences.
When walking inside, the museum starts with different topic stations on multiple screens spread out across the building. One can scroll through different eras of the Cold War and skip to whichever other topic whenever they want, as well as scan QR codes leading to more in-depth rundowns of the topic at hand. Whether that’s on Espionage, Berlin, or the formation of the Western and Eastern bloc, there’s a station.
In the upstairs area, there’s life-size recreations of real tanks used during the war that can be observed through the scanning of a QR code and glass-kept cases filled with real-life artifacts from the nuclear war threats.
In an interview with Sarah Felgentreu, part of the CWM’s curatorial team, she talks about Kollmeier’s intention with this aspect of interactiveness in this digitalization of the museum.
“He wanted this museum to be kind of like a space for a young person can go with their grandma and grandpa and experience history.” Felgentreu said.
She states that the museum’s purpose serves as a way for young people to gravitate towards learning about the history of Berlin, especially young people in Germany.
“He [Kollmeier] noticed that especially younger people don’t know much about the Cold War, in Germany especially,” she said. “They know there was a wall and they know that it fell.”\
One of the biggest revelations from this museum making it considered Berlin’s first Cold War 4.0 museum is the establishment’s use of virtual reality. “The Jump” is an extra segment of the museum’s experience where guests will be brought through dramatic reenactments of scenarios like being a border guard jumping over the barbed wire from the Berlin wall.
Dr. Peter Ridder, the head of the curatory team at CWM, is adamant about the pivotal role that these technological advancements like VR bring to the museum as a whole.
“It’s a way to attract younger people to go into a museum to get entangled and deal with history,” Ridder said. “These technologies offer great perspectives and possibilities to bring the history to the people.”
For younger people, it’s an experience that would enhance the way they learn about history. For older people, it’s an experience that would enhance how they remember living through it. Regardless of where you stand in the range of demographics, the history will still be there.
“We have a very dynamic exhibition that means we are constantly working on the exhibition to include new issues and topics and rework the existing topics […]” he said. “The exhibition will never be on the final stage.”
Source List
Oral sources:
Dr. Ridder Peter, Head of Curatory Team & Historian
Email: dpr@coldwarmuseum.de
Linkedin: https://de.linkedin.com/in/dr-peter-ridder-062291153
Sarah Felgentreu, Curatory Team Staff member
Tel: 017624974437
Email: sf@coldwarmuseum.de
Written sources:
Cold War Museum. https://coldwarmuseum.de/en/
Pintos Paula. Cold War Museum / Tchoban Voss Architekten. ArchDaily. https://www.archdaily.com/996451/cold-war-museum-tchoban-voss-architekten
Roxborough, Scott (November, 26th, 2022). Berlin opens first-ever Cold War museum. Deutsche Welle. https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-opens-first-ever-cold-war-museum/a-63868666
Research note
Main focus: This story is about the new Cold War Museum in Berlin and how it uses digital technologies in order to educate people, especially the younger generations for the Cold War era. The main focus of the story is to demonstrate how people from different age groups are coming closer through experiencing for the first time (younger people) or reliving the events (survivors) from that era, with the use of the VR technology.
Why it is newsworthy: It is a story relevant and timely, because it talks about a new and more interesting way of educating all kinds of people about the Cold War and it is more appealing to the younger ones, as they are more experienced and used to the interaction with digital technologies.This pioneering initiative of the VR experience, could fire a wide-range dynamic to how the act of learning is perceived in general.