Posted way after the fact but typed up a week ago.
I think the museum of German history is supposed to emphasize continuity but does not succeed in doing so. They attempt to cover the same subjects in each epoch but have so many subjects and too much information in each subject the physical and mental distance between matching exhibitions in different time periods made the connections difficult to match. It would be like sticking the National Native American Museum and all of the Air and Space in the same building and attempting to create those ties.
Finally, there’s bound to be at least two exhibits that you will find particularly interesting. Be prepared to discuss the following in class:
The jousting suit of armor- a lot of revolutions have an undercurrent of knights being neither nobles nor commoners and there was no idea of a middle class in the middle ages.
A tie in exhibition was the first set of guns. They represent the death of knights and castles to me. Warfare takes on a nasty tinge with the development of guns. Guns led to offensive arms race. Previously European cities and nobles built heavy fortifications but because of gunpowder became useless. A good offense is a good defense became the new game. This ties back to our visit to the DDR museum (GDR for you Americans) where the Berlin wall was put up to prevent the mass exodus of talented East Germans to West Germany. What is extremely interesting about this is that since German reunification the states that were part of East Germany have all had decreasing populations.
