One of the world’s great museum entrances has to be the Altes Museum in Berlin. Stone eagles sit in a row above the entablature, and 18 ionic columns line the portico. A huge granite basin sits in front. This was the king Friedrich Wilhelm the thirds idea, and his architect Schinkel realised it. Built by 1830, it was a relatively recent idea that the middle classes, newly confident, should have access to great culture.
The granite basin in front of the Altes Museum is 7 metres across. They were obviously looking to go to the level of the ancient Egyptians in scale for this one.You then enter a great rotunda, inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, and ringed by statues of the Greek gods.Next you would have walked through a doorway and are greeted by what is in my opinion the jewel of German archeology: the boy praying, an original Greek bronze.
The ‘boy praying’ statue is from around 300 BC, and was found in Rhodes. By 1503 it had ended up in Venice, and then cycled through the hands of aristocrats around Italy, was owned by Charles the first in England at one point, and by French royalty later. Eventually Fredrich the Great had it at his palace in Potsdam where he could see it from his desk in his study. Luckily in a more democratic century it is accessible to all of us plebs, if you make it to Berlin.
The Neus Museum next door was the idea of the next king, Wilhem the fourth. It was badly hit in the war, and rebuilt in part, leaving the bullet holes on the outside, in the early 2000s.
In the Neus Museum next door I was struck by the splendour of this marble statue of Helios, god of the sun. It had to be lowered by a helicopter through the ceiling! Its eyes are piercing.The second of the great bronzes held by Germany, Xanten Boy. This figure would have carried a tray full of luxurious foods.
The sculpture above, Xanten Boy, was found by fishermen on the banks of the Rhine river near Xanten in southern Germany in 1858. He wears a crown of grapes, flowers, pomegranate and fruits of the field. He would have been present holding a tray at a Roman banquet. He probably comes from the first century AD. Perhaps he was dropped into the river when someone had stolen him and was making off. Imagining the bronze sculpture in place in a Roman banqueting room you start to get an idea of how old is the idea of presenting beautiful food and drink to one’s guests as a gesture of abundance and celebration.
The Humbolt Forum is a reconstruction of the baroque palace that was here in an earlier epoch. Afterwards an ugly socialist concrete rectangle took its place. But as of the last two and a half years you can sit in the Lustgarten and look in the direction of the Humbolt Forum and see an elegant stone building in every direction. Sometimes going forwards requires going back.
One of my favourite places in Berlin is the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, the Museum for Asian Art. This is on the top floor of the Humbolt Forum.
A new sculpture on a window pediment, on an inner courtyard of the Humbolt Forum, 2020. All the carvings required for this building caused a minor renaissance in these skills.
In one of the early sections of this museum you will find Buddhist sculpture and art from north-west Pakistan. Alexander the Great of Macedonia conquered the Gandhara civilisation here in 327 BC, and brought Hellenistic influences in the art. So much of what I saw here was Greco-Buddhist art and sculpture. You can see the robes or the poses or other aspects of the representations of the Buddha having strong Hellenistic influences as you walk around this section of the museum. West melds with East, East melts into West.
The relief carving below was one of my favourite works. A perfect example of the power of meditation to rise above negative emotions.
When assailed by the turbulent feelings of anger, fear and aggression, symbolised here as the ‘troops of Mara’, the Buddha could find serenity through meditation. Gandhara, Pakistan, 2-3rd century.
Seven months ago, at the end of 2022, the below stone gate was finished. It was only officially inaugurated four months, at the end of April. But it is one of the coolest things in Berlin: a 1:1 reproduction in beautiful red German sand stone of the Gate of Sanchi. The Gate of Sanchi is one of the high points in the history of world architecture. It is 10 metres tall, 6 metres wide, and weights 150 tons – and the original is one of the oldest stone structures in all of India. In the 1860s, British Lieutenant Henry Hardy Cole made a cast of the East Gate of Sanchi, the main portal of an ancient stupa, for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Imagine how hard it would be to make a plaster cast of something this big! When the British came upon this gate the site was neglected by the locals – no longer Buddhist – and lay in total ruin. What a testament to the curiosity about the world of the archeologists of England that they bothered to do this, and that Germany has just paid almost two million Euros to recreate this and put it in the heart of their city.
The Gate of Sanchi, outside the new Humbolt Forum building. These were actually milled with a CNC routing machine (a robot basically), based on scans of a nineteenth century cast made Germany had bought from Britain, and then hand finished by stone carvers. They used the Rhine land red sand stone I had seen in the castle at Heidelberg – so this is a testament to Germany’s love of archeology and art and technology and travel all together. The goddess Shiva holds creation in his left hand, destruction in her right, and tramples on ignorance below. Natajara, the dancing shiva, from South India, 19th century (Humbolt Forum).
Perhaps my favourite works in the museum are the eighteenth century Chinese paintings on silk. Images to stand in front of and empty one’s mind. I slowed down and focused on the brush strokes that transported me to mists and space, silence and beauty.
Two figures contemplate the void. Two ships pass by in the distance. Are we forever alone, even as we are together? Wang Yun, 1715, ink and colour on silk (Humbolt Forum). Wu Hong, 1723 (Hubolt Museum)
This morning I visited the Treptower Park Soviet War Memorial, the largest war memorial in Germany and a place that honours the Soviet victory over the Nazis when they eventually took Berlin, and the more than 80 thousand Russian soldiers who were killed. More than 5 thousand are buried under the grass here where I was walking. This is the most impressive war memorial I have ever seen.
Two giant flags made from red granite are lowered as a kind of gate to the space. A huge rectangle greets you of grass, flanked by many large stone sarcophagi on either side of this long rectangle. At the opposite end you see a hill on which stands a vast bronze statue of a victorious soldier. The soldier carries a sword, and its blade bites down into a broken swastika. Leaving aside the politics of all this for a moment, you could not design a more monumental and awe inspiring war memorial. This was made about four years after Berlin had surrounded to the Soviet troops in mid 1945. It took 3 years to build with 1200 workers and 200 sculptors. As I walked around looking at the carved stone reliefs telling the story of the Russian struggle to defeat the Nazis I was reminded that at least symbolically the Russians had won the second world war. They raised their flag over the Reichstag.
Note the blade cutting into the swastika.Under this grass lay more than 5 thousand dead Russian soldiers.
Berlin can easily bring thoughts of sad and monumental European history to mind.
But it can also easily lighten the load. Ever since Christopher Isherwood can here in the twenties to live a bohemian life, or Nick Cave came here in the eighties to be debauched and compose music, or continuing with the electronica of the clubs of today, it has had a lighter side.
I walked around Freidrichshain yesterday evening as the sun was low and the warm summer glow filled the cafes and bars of this alternative, creative neighbourhood. It felt like one of the coolest places to be in Europe. Free thinking, young, international, open minded, artistic people walked and sat, chatted in parks with beers bought at corner stores, snacked at vegan Vietnamese or imbibed at Portuguese bars. The light cast long rays down the street through the canopy of the many trees around Boxhagener Platz. The buzz was palpable. And it wasn’t marred, like it is in Rome or Paris or Florence by the hoards of American, Chinese, and other nations camera wielding tourists. It seemed to be mainly people who lived in Berlin – although I’m sure there were people like me there for the fun.
Boxhagener Platz, very social and aromatic with the smell of joints.So many people out on the pavement enjoying the summer, finally here after weeks of grey weather in northern Europe.
