LAST YEAR, URTE EVERT RECEIVED a 400-pound church bell imprinted with a small but unmistakable swastika, and she faced a conundrum. Evert is the director of the Citadel Museum in the Berlin suburb of Spandau, and the bronze bell—cast in 1934 for the ascendant Nazi regime—hung at the nearby Evangelical Church of Hakenfelde until the astonishingly recent date of 2017. Evert hoped to add the Nazi artifact to the museum’s permanent collection of toxic monuments: busts of militaristic Prussian rulers; statues of Aryan athletes and warriors; and an eight-ton granite head of Vladimir Lenin, which took two years of political and bureaucratic wrangling to dig out of the ground. But first, Evert had to weigh the risks of exhibiting a church bell installed during the Nazi period. What would the bell represent, and what could visitors learn from it? And could it become a kind of shrine for members of far-right or neo-Nazi groups?
Evert’s job at the Citadel Museum, which is housed in the former provisions depot of a Renaissance-era fortress, is to critically examine the culture of monuments. Rather than scrubbing the area of statues that symbolize racism, antisemitism, and other forms of violence and oppression, the museum aims to contextualize the past, putting uncomfortable realities on display in productive, educational, and sometimes challenging ways.
“Inside the museum, visitors confront at eye level statues and monuments that used to represent power,” Evert says. “You can touch everything. Nothing is put on a pedestal. You can talk about what makes you mad.” Since December, the Nazi church bell has been on permanent loan. It inspired a special exhibition on Spandau’s churches under National Socialism, a collaboration between college students and the museum.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/museum-of-toxic-statues-berlin
Evert’s job at the Citadel Museum, which is housed in the former provisions depot of a Renaissance-era fortress, is to critically examine the culture of monuments. Rather than scrubbing the area of statues that symbolize racism, antisemitism, and other forms of violence and oppression, the museum aims to contextualize the past, putting uncomfortable realities on display in productive, educational, and sometimes challenging ways.
“Inside the museum, visitors confront at eye level statues and monuments that used to represent power,” Evert says. “You can touch everything. Nothing is put on a pedestal. You can talk about what makes you mad.” Since December, the Nazi church bell has been on permanent loan. It inspired a special exhibition on Spandau’s churches under National Socialism, a collaboration between college students and the museum.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/museum-of-toxic-statues-berlin