Opening: Sunday, 12 May 2024, 3 pm
Greeting: Dr. Carola Brückner, District Councillor
Introduction to the exhibition: Dr. Urte Evert, Museum Director Zitadelle Spandau
Monday, 12 May 1924, was museum weather: At 15 degrees and rain, district mayor Martin Stritte opened the Spandau Museum of Local History in the large ground floor room of the town hall. In the following decades, the museum not only moved several times until it was able to establish itself in the citadel. It also grew with its tasks, which it shares with all museums – collecting, preserving, researching, exhibiting and communicating. The collection and exhibition space grew steadily, as did the variety of topics and the demands on the communication of history.
In 2024, we will not only be celebrating a milestone birthday, but also the evolution from a local history museum – which certainly seems outdated by today’s standards – into a unique space for exchanging ideas about provenance and the future, cultural assets and life stories, new discoveries and new stories to be told. However, the exhibition provides more than just an insight into the last 100 years of museum work in Spandau. It tells intensively about the political influence on local history research – completely perverted from 1933 to 1945, but not entirely free of it in other decades either. But the objects, pictures and quotes also bear witness to the dreams, wishes and realities of the residents of Spandau.
The opportunities for a direct exchange of opinions, ideas and wishes for the future of a historical museum are and remain important in this exhibition. A playful approach with interactive stations invites visitors to engage with the exploration of valuable or even strange things, to make decisions about preservation and to think about concepts such as tradition and home.
