Museum Europäischer Kulturen

The Museum of European Cultures (German: Museum Europäischer Kulturen) - National Museums in Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation came from the unification of the Europe-Department in the Berlin Museum of Ethnography and the Berlin Museum for Folklore in 1999. The museum focuses on the lived-in world of Europe and European culture contact, predominantly in Germany from the 18th Century until today.

The museum, together with the Ethnological Museum of Berlin and the Museum of Asian Art, is located in the Dahlem Museums. The building was named after the architect Bruno Paul (1874 – 1968) and is located in the modern district of Steglitz-Zehlendorf. The museum’s exhibition rooms occupy the oldest building in the Dahlem Museums.

The current Museum of European Cultures was established from several previous institutions which arose at the beginning of the 19th century and are due in part to private initiatives as well as governmental foundations.

The basis of the exhibit was two shaman drums of the northern European Sámi which came to the Königlich Preußische Kunstkammer (Royal Prussian Art Collection) at the beginning of the 19th century. In 1859 the Neues Museum opened which, among others, had an ethnological collection. This collection also held the “Europa” Cabinet, which surmises the nucleus of the current Museum for European Cultures.

The Ethnological Museum of the Königlich Preußischen Museen (Royal Prussian Museums) was institutionally founded in 1873. In 1886 the Museum opened in a new building, which also contained European ethnographica, although no collections explicitly from Germany. Plans for a combined exhibit of both non-European objects and European objects, with special consideration of German culture, failed both because of lack of room as well as the founding of a “National Museum”, which presented the history of the European “folk” with a focus on German culture from pre-history until the then present day.

The private initiative of the Berliner physician, anthropologist, and politician Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) and other members of the Berliner Anthropoligischen Gesellschaft (Berlin Anthropological Organization) led in 1889 to the founding and facilitation of the first Germany-wide central “Museum für deutsche Volkstrachten und Erzeugnisses des Hausgewerbes” (Museum for German Traditional Costumes and Handicrafts). From 1891 the Museum was financed through the Museum Association which was specifically established for this purpose. The goal of the museum was to give room to the cultural objects of their “own people” that had been excluded in ethnology as well as bordering, German-speaking lands. Furthermore, the material goods from the country and farms, which in the wake of Industrialization had begun to disappear, would be protected.

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