Neues Museum • Old National Gallery • Bode Museum
Old National Gallery (Alte Nationalgalerie)
One of Berlin’s most ambitious urban renewal projects is taking place in the cultural park of Museum Island, which sits right in the middle of the Spree. The 19th-century Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who imagined this island as a place of art and learning, masterminded the construction of what would eventually become five separate museums. WWII bombs and communist-era neglect left the buildings and their collections in shambles. Now, each of these world-class galleries (proud home to the Greek Pergamon Altar and the exquisite Queen Nefertiti bust) is being renovated in turn. When it’s finally done, a grand visitors center will link the museum campus together.
Museum lovers could spend all day here. I’ve provided two chapters to guide your visit: The Pergamon Museum is covered in depth in the next chapter, and the other four museums are covered here. Use this rundown to help you choose:
The Pergamon Museum is the most famous of the five, renowned for its treasures from ancient Babylon, Assyria, Rome, and the Islamic world. (Think of it as the “German British Museum.”) Its massive-scale artifacts are thrilling, but its star attraction—the Pergamon Altar—is undergoing a years-long renovation. For complete orientation details and a self-guided tour, see the next chapter.
The Neues Museum rolls back in time to the prehistoric world. Among its highlights are a toothy Neanderthal skull, a remarkably crafted Golden Hat belonging to early Celtic people, and—most important—the bust of Nefertiti, arguably the most famous artifact from ancient Egypt. Nefertiti—a bigger crowd-pleaser than anything in the Pergamon—makes the Neues perhaps even more purely enjoyable for a casual visitor.
The Old National Gallery focuses on German Romantic painting from the 19th century (especially Caspar David Friedrich’s moody landscapes). This is the best museum in town for German art.
The Bode Museum is, frankly, more about its striking museum building (with its grand domed entryway) than its collection of Byzantine art, sculptures, and coins. It’s worth a visit for numismatists and those who appreciate Byzantine mosaics.
The Altes (Old) Museum is the least interesting of the bunch. Unless you’re looking for more classical antiquities, skip it (I did).
(See “Museum Island” map, here.)
Cost: Individual admission to the Pergamon or the Neues is €12; it’s €10 for the Old National Gallery, Bode, or Altes (audioguide included for each). If you’re touring at least two of the collections—for example, the Pergamon and the Neues—invest in the €18 Museum Island Pass or the €29 Museum Pass Berlin.
Hours: Museum hours are 10:00-18:00, Thursdays until 20:00. The Pergamon and Neues museums are open daily; the Old National Gallery, Bode Museum, and Altes Museum are open Tue-Sun, closed Mon.
Information: All five museums are managed by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (SMB). Tel. 030/266-424-242, www.smb.museum.
When to Go: The popular Pergamon and the Neues are typically busiest in the morning, on weekends, and when it rains. Crowds aren’t a problem at the Old National Gallery or the Bode.
Getting There: The nearest S-Bahn stations are Hackescher Markt and Friedrichstrasse, each about a 10-minute walk away. The Am Kupfergraben tram stop (#M1 or #12) is just across the river from the Pergamon, cutting your walk. Or ride bus #100 or #200 along Unter den Linden to the Lustgarten stop.
Getting In: A new riverside entrance pavilion called the James-Simon-Galerie is being built on the west bank of Museum Island. During construction, museum entrances could move around, but they are always well-signed. As of this writing, you’ll find the entrances to the Pergamon, Neues Museum, and Old National Gallery a few steps apart, all facing a leafy courtyard behind the colonnade on Bodestrasse. To find the Bode, head to the very northern end of the island.
Tours: Each museum has its own excellent audioguide (included in admission). Ask for these when you enter, and use them to supplement the selective information given here.
Services: Each museum has free (often obligatory) coat-check desks and lockers.
Eateries: You’ll find basic cafés in the Altes, Neues, and Bode (the last beautifully set in its free-to-enter domed lobby). For lunch in a nearby neighborhood, follow the elevated train tracks away from the Pergamon down Georgenstrasse (see recommendations on here), or cross the Friedrichsbrücke (bridge between the Old National Gallery and Berlin Cathedral), turn left, and follow signs for five minutes to Hackescher Markt, with its multitude of eateries (see here).
Construction Warning: A formidable renovation is under way on Museum Island. When complete (2024 at the earliest), a new visitors center will link the Pergamon Museum with the Altes Museum, the Pergamon will get a fourth wing, tunnels will lace the complex together, and this will become one of the grandest museum zones in Europe. In the meantime, pardon their dust.
Starring: The bust of Nefertiti (in the Neues Museum), German Romantic paintings (in the Old National Gallery), and sumptuous Byzantine mosaics (in the Bode Museum).
After being damaged in World War II and sitting in ruins for some 40 years, the Neues Museum has been gorgeously rebuilt. Oddly, this so-called “new” museum features the oldest stuff around. The star attraction is the famously beautiful bust of Egypt’s Queen Nefertiti. You have permission to make a beeline for her and call it a museum. But with more time, the Neues offers much more: more ancient statues, a vivid papyrus collection, slice-of-life artifacts, and dreamy wax portraits decorating mummy cases.
This one-hour tour, covering the museum from top to bottom, takes you on a roughly chronological journey through time—from a 45,000-year-old skull, to a prognosticating prehistoric hat, to portraits of that ancient Egyptian power couple, Nefertiti and Akhenaton.
• The Neues Museum ticket desk is across the courtyard from the entrance. Ticket in hand, enter and pick up the floor plan.
Head up the central staircase, continuing all the way to the top floor, level 3. At the top of the stairs, turn left, entering Room 311. Pass through three rooms, to Room 309. You run into a glass display case with a skull, a few bones, and a bust of a human head. Welcome to prehistory.
This skull with impressive dentition comes from a teenage Neanderthal boy who lived 45,000 years ago in central France. A bust displayed next to the skull re-creates what archaeologists think he might have looked like. (A Neanderthal Michael Cera?)
The Neanderthal people (scholars surmise) lived alongside our Homo-sapiens ancestors. Humans and Neanderthals occasionally even interbred, but their offspring never flourished, so the two remained separate species. Around 30,000 B.C., the Neanderthals mysteriously died out. The skeleton of this teenage boy was discovered—in a fetal position, accompanied by a few crude stone-cutting tools—in 1908, in a cave in France’s Dordogne River Valley. The boy’s Homo-sapiens neighbors, the Cro-Magnons, would go on to create the wondrous cave paintings in nearby Lascaux.
Also displayed in Room 309 are the ancient bones of the animals these early people hunted: mammoths, moose, and so on.
• Exit at the far end of the room and pass through a long room of early human tools, spearheads, and pottery. Crossing the landing and heading through Room 306, you’ll go from the Stone Age to the Ice Age to our next stop—one of the treasures of the Bronze Age. You’ll find it in the dimly-lit corner Room 305.
The tall, conehead-like Golden Hat—made of paper-thin gold leaf—was likely worn by the priest of a sun cult popular among the Celtic people of central Europe around 1,000 B.C. It’s stamped with symbols of the heavens—mostly sun-like circles, plus a few crescent moons, and stars on the top.
Admire the incredible workmanship of these prehistoric people. The hat, 30 inches tall, was hammered from a pound of gold into a single sheet of gold leaf less than a millimeter thick. (Originally, the gold hat probably had an inner support structure of cloth or wood.) To make the hat, these early Celtic peoples fired up a charcoal furnace stoked with a bellows that could heat things to 1500 degrees F. To strengthen the finished hat and keep it from cracking, they mixed silver and copper into the pure gold. To make the decorations, they used a dozen individual tools with sun-, moon-, and star-shaped stamps.
This weird hat could be used to predict full moons or solstices up to five years in advance. Here’s how it worked: There are 21 horizontal bands, each containing a number of symbols. You’d add up the symbols within each band—e.g., a row of 20 suns, each with five concentric circles, totals up to 100 symbols. You’d add that to neighboring bands to calculate the various months, seasons, and years. Note that the fifth band from the top (with the crescent moons and eyes) is special: Its 38 symbols calculated oddities like leap years.
The hat could be used as either a solar calendar (a year of 365 sunrises) or lunar calendar (a year of 12 full moons, totaling 354 days). It could even demonstrate how those two counting methods sync up every 19 years. This “lunisolar” calendar (linking the moon and the sun) preceded the ancient Greek calendar by 500 years.
For superstitious Celtic people, this hat must have seemed supernatural. It endowed the druid who wore it with almost magical powers. He could predict upcoming events with eerie accuracy. It told the tribe when to plant and when to harvest, when to worship which gods, and when to throw the next New Year’s Eve bash.
• If you hear some strange sounds as you view the Golden Hat, they’re coming from right outside the room—where you’ll find a display of slinky, golden lur horns from northern Europe. Press the button to hear their haunting tone.
Next up, ancient Egypt. Continue circling the top floor counter-clockwise. You’ll pass through exhibits on the Iron Age. (Europeans began forging iron around 1000 B.C.—by which time the overachieving Egyptians had already been doing it for 400 years.)
When you reach the stairwell, descend to the next floor and turn right, entering Room 208—the Egyptian Collection.
Browse through the large Room 208, full of statues in glass cases. The poses are stiff—seated or standing, with few details that mark these as individual people. Make your way through Egyptian history. There’s the so-called Old Kingdom (c. 2500-2000 B.C.), when the pyramids were built. The Middle Period (c. 2000-1500 B.C.) was a turbulent time marked by foreign invasions. The New Kingdom (c. 1500-1000 B.C.) saw Egypt rise to its pinnacle of power, overseen by the husband-and-wife team we are about to meet—Akhenaton and Nefertiti.
Continue into Room 209, which features objects from the reign of the pharaoh Akhenaton.
The bust and relief on display capture the distinctive likeness of the pharaoh who transformed Egypt. Both show his narrow face, prominent chin, sensual features, and Mick Jagger lips. The bust, unfinished and badly damaged, was once painted and held a crown covered with gold leaf. Note the uraeus on Akhenaton’s forehead; worn by pharaohs, this symbol of supreme authority shows a cobra rearing to strike.
When Akhenaton took the throne in 1380 B.C., he rocked conservative Egypt by promoting monotheism to his polytheistic subjects. He lumped the countless gods of the Egyptian pantheon into one all-powerful being, Aton the sun god. Akhenaton’s reign was a striking exception to Egypt’s 2,000 years of political, religious, and artistic rigidity.
Akhenaton married Nefertiti—a commoner, whose name meant “the beautiful one has come.” They moved into a new palace and started a family. In the small adjoining room, look for the happy couple in the carved-relief stele. Wearing their royal crowns, they relax under the shining rays of the sun god. At the tips of the rays, a few cross-shaped ankh hieroglyphs—the symbol of life—represent Akhenaton’s new deity sending life to his subjects. The royal children frolic on the laps of their regal mummy and daddy. This relief, softened by its human touch, has a naturalness that’s quite different from the stiffness of most traditional Egyptian art.
Postscript: Akhenaton’s daughter married a teenage pharaoh, Tutankhamen—“King Tut.” It was the unearthing of Tut’s mummy in 1922 that helped stoke Europe’s interest in Egyptology.
• Before leaving, take a last glance at the bust of Akhenaton from the side. Notice the V-shaped tilt of the neck—we’ll see it mirrored in the next room. Now let’s meet Akhenaton’s wife (and Tut’s mother-in-law), the “beautiful one” named Nefertiti. She has a room all her own—Room 210. (Note that she’s had it with the paparazzi—photos of Nefertiti are strictly verboten.)
The 3,000-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaton, is the most famous piece of Egyptian art in Europe.
Nefertiti has all the right beauty marks: long slender neck, perfect lips, almond eyes, symmetrical eyebrows, pronounced cheekbones, and a perfect spray-on tan.
Nefertiti’s pose is perfectly symmetrical from every angle—front, back and side. From the side, her V-shaped profile creates a dynamic effect: she leans forward, gazing intently, while her funnel-shaped hat swoops up and back. Her colorful hat is a geometrically flawless, tapered cylinder.
And yet, despite her seemingly perfect beauty, Nefertiti has a touch of humanity. Notice the fine wrinkles around the eyes—these only enhance her beauty. She has a slight Mona Lisa smile, pursed at the corners. Her eyebrows are so delicately detailed, you can make out each single hair. From the back, the perfection of her neck is marked with a bump of reality—a protruding vertebra. Her look is meditative, intelligent, lost in thought. Like a movie star discreetly sipping a glass of wine at a sidewalk café, Nefertiti seems somehow more dignified in person.
In real life, Nefertiti, though born a commoner, was much honored. As the pharaoh’s wife, she was also recognized as a god on earth, part of the trinity of Akhenaton, Nefertiti, and the sun god Aton. Nefertiti had six children—all daughters.
The bust is made of limestone, with a stucco surface. This bust may have been meant as a companion piece to the bust of Akhenaton in the previous room. But this bust never left its studio. It served as a master model for all other portraits of the queen. (That’s probably why the artist didn’t bother putting the quartz inlay in the left eye.) Stare at her long enough, and you may get the sensation that she’s winking at you.
How the queen arrived in Germany is a tale out of Indiana Jones. The German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt uncovered her in the Egyptian desert in 1912. The Egyptian Department of Antiquities had first pick of all the artifacts uncovered on their territory. After the first takings, they divided the rest 50/50 with the excavators. When Borchardt presented Nefertiti to the Egyptians, they passed her over, never bothering to examine her closely. (Unsubstantiated rumors persist that Borchardt misled the Egyptians in order to keep the bust for himself—prompting some Egyptians to call for Nefertiti’s return, just as the Greeks are lobbying the British to return the Parthenon frieze currently housed in the British Museum.)
Although this bust is not particularly representative of Egyptian art in general—and despite increasing claims that her long neck suggests she’s a Neoclassical fake—Nefertiti has become a symbol of Egyptian art by popular acclaim. And since her arrival in Berlin, she’s also become something of a symbol of Germany itself—Germany’s “queen.” Hitler promoted her as a pagan symbol of his new non-Christian Reich. When Germany was split in the Cold War, both sides fought to claim her. Today Nefertiti’s timeless beauty has come to represent the aspirations of the German people.
• The Egyptian Collection continues in Room 211—the “Library of Antiquity.”
This large room is filled with what looks like empty display cases. Press a button to watch a 3,000-year-old document trundle out of its protective home. You’ll see ancient texts in many languages—Egyptian hieroglyphs, Greek, Latin, and so on. They’re written on everything from paper to cloth, wood, pottery, stone tablets, and parchment—but the most prevalent material is papyrus. The collection here contains thousands of examples of this most classically Egyptian material, made from the fibrous pith of a common marsh reed. Perusing these documents is a fascinating look at the ancient world’s laws, business transactions, plays, and even early fiction.
• Exiting Room 211, you’ll pass through more rooms with exhibits on migrations, barbarians, and ancient Rome (including larger-than-life Roman statues), plaster casts of Ghiberti’s famous bronze doors on the Florence Baptistery, coins, and displays about medieval times after the fall of the classical world.
Then head downstairs to level 1, and turn left, entering Room 111.
There’s much more of Egypt in this and the next rooms—statues of pharaohs, wall paintings, reliefs from tombs, even a reconstructed burial chapel. In Room 109, the glass cases of “30 Centuries of Sculpture,” filled with the sculpted heads of pharaohs, priests, and scribes, trace concepts of portraiture over the millennia.
In the center of Room 109, find the Berlin Green Head, from around 350 B.C. No one knows who this bald, smooth-skinned man was, but his knitted-brow look makes him come to life. (Some think his shaved head indicates he was a priest.) Sculpted even as Egypt was being conquered by Greece, this combines Greek realism with timeless Egyptian features. This Green Man’s determined look is a thought-provoking glimpse into Egypt’s future.
If you want still more Egypt, you’ll find it downstairs on level 0, where you can see small-scale statuettes and models as well as a sea of large sarcophagi.
• But we’ll finish our tour here on level 1. Backtrack the way you came, cross the stairwell, and make your way to Rooms 103-104.
There’s not much to see in these rooms—a few gold necklaces and old pots—but the text panels help explain the craze for antiquities that brought us the Neues Museum.
Much of it can be traced to the man featured in these rooms: Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) was the real-life Indiana Johann of his era. Having read Homer’s accounts of the Trojan War, Schliemann set out on a quest to find the long-lost ruins of the city of Troy. He (probably) found the capital of the Trojans (in Turkey), as well as the capital of the Greeks (Mycenae, in the Greek Peloponnese). Displays in Room 103 tell the fascinating story of how Schliemann smuggled the treasures out in fruit baskets, then their long journey until they were donated to the German government. (Unfortunately, Schliemann’s treasure trove was looted when the Soviets invaded Berlin during World War II, which is why so few artifacts remain here.) Schliemann’s derring-do sparked the imagination of all Europe. Soon, other archaeologists were traveling to Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and returning with the artifacts that fill this grand museum. Danke, Herr Schliemann, for bringing the ancient world back to life.
• Our next museum is the one that resembles a Greek temple (behind the Neues and Altes museums).
Dramatic, colorful, Romantic landscapes are the star of this gallery of 19th-century art. The most famous of the German Romantics is Caspar David Friedrich, and we’ll see his moody painting Monk By the Sea. The museum also features a few choice works from well-known French Impressionists Manet, Monet, Renoir, and company. True art lovers will enjoy the German Realists, with their slice-of-life scenes from the Industrial Age. Frankly, you probably won’t recognize any specific paintings in the entire museum. But it’s still an enjoyable 45-minute stroll through German culture from the 1800s—the century when Germany came of age and found its cultural identity.
Start on the third floor—the main focus of the collection—and work your way down. You can take the stairs, or look for the elevator by the ticket desk.
• The first stop is in the small, standalone Room 3.02 just off the landing (straight ahead as you come up the stairs; from the elevator, you’ll have to backtrack to the landing).
Use this room’s colorful paintings as an introduction to the Romantic art we’ll see next. These frescoes, originally painted on the walls of a villa in Rome, tell the biblical story of Joseph. They were done by idealistic artists of the artistic brotherhood called the Nazarenes.
It was the early 1800s, and the German people were searching for their unique national identity. In art, the Nazarenes were breaking free from the Italian and French styles that had dominated Germany’s academies for centuries. For inspiration, they returned to Germany’s cultural roots—the Middle Ages.
As a result, the Bible story of Joseph looks strangely medieval: medieval-looking kings, peasants in tunics, rustic castles, and Germanic landscapes. The Nazarenes were seeking a purer form of expression that was uniquely German. This almost religious fervor would inspire the next generation of German artists—the Romantics.
• Make your way through some of the smaller side-rooms to reach the large Room 3.05—in the very center of the building (flanked with white columns).
Schinkel is best known as the architect who remade Berlin in the 1820s. He designed buildings all around the city, including the Neue Wache, the Concert Hall on Gendarmenmarkt, the Altes Museum—and even a section of the museum you’re in. With Greek columns, clean lines, and mathematical symmetry, Schinkel’s buildings epitomized the then-popular Neoclassical style.
But as a painter, Schinkel took a totally different path—toward Romanticism. His haunting landscapes clearly show his fascination with architecture. Gothic cathedrals and castles dominate his scenes. These buildings are clearly fantasies, not practical blueprints: They’re impossibly tall, perched dramatically on cliffs, overlooking distant vistas, and engulfed in clouds. Foliage grows over the buildings, and animals wander through. Nature rules. Where puny humans do appear, they are dwarfed by the landscape and buildings. Scenes are lit by a dramatic, eerie light, as though the world is charged from within by the power of God. Welcome to Romanticism.
• Head back to one of the side corridors. Next, continue to the large Room 3.06.
The greatest German artist of the Romantic era was Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). A quick glance around this room dedicated to his paintings gives you a sense of Friedrich’s subjects: craggy mountains, twisted trees, ominous clouds, burning sunsets, and lone figures in the gloom.
Friedrich specialized in eerie landscapes. Rather than painting placid, pretty scenes as other landscape artists might, Friedrich celebrated Nature’s awesome power. The few people he painted are tiny and solitary, standing with their backs to us. As they ponder the vastness of their surroundings, we’re invited to see the world through their eyes, and to contemplate humankind’s miniscule place in the grand scheme of things.
• Hey, this is “Romantic” painting, so my descriptions have to be equally melodramatic. Now, let’s see a few of Friedrich’s paintings—in chronological order, as we trace the sometimes turbulent arc of his life.
Monk by the Sea, 1808-1810: A lone figure stands on a sand dune, pondering a vast, turbulent expanse of sea and sky. Scholars have suggested that the monk—slender, with long blond hair—is Friedrich himself.
The movement known as Romanticism, popular in the early 1800s, emphasized the heart over the head. Romantics questioned the clinical detachment of science, industrial pollution, and the personal restrictions of modern life. Instead, they reveled in strong emotions, personal freedom, and the beauties of Nature.
Romantics worshipped nature’s awe-inspiring splendor. Walking through forests, along rivers, and up mountainsides, Romantics communed with their true self: namely, the primitive, “noble savage” beneath the intellectual crust. Romantic painters tried to capture the beauty of nature, but especially its drama. Ominous clouds, rainbows, distant horizons, eerie lighting effects—all these suggested not just what the eye saw but what the heart felt.
The German Romantic movement was closely tied with German national identity. Remember, as late as the mid-1800s, there was no German “nation.” What tied the German people together was their indigenous roots, language, folklore, and common myths. These dated back centuries, to medieval times. So German Romantics glorified these medieval roots. The old folklore was resurrected and popularized by the Brothers Grimm. Painters depicted unspoiled German landscapes and dreamy German villages. Portraits of the German people showed them as rugged and proud. These were themes that would strum the heartstrings of anyone with Teutonic blood. So inspired, the German people would unite and form the modern nation of Germany in 1871.
This painting made Friedrich instantly famous. It was exhibited here in Berlin, in 1810, and was bought by none other than the king of Prussia. By then, Friedrich was in his mid-thirties. He’d honed his craft at a stuffy painting academy, but his true passion was roaming Germany’s rugged countryside and sketching with pencil and paper, directly from nature. Then he returned to the studio to meticulously compose the final work in oils.
This beach scene is laid out in three horizontal layers: land, sea, and sky. This horizontal axis is offset by a single vertical line—the lone monk. You’ll see this same horizontal/vertical technique in other Friedrich canvases.
Landscapes by Friedrich might better be called “skyscapes.” In this painting, the sky taking up the majority of the canvas is a murky mix of black clouds, grey wisps, and ambiguous lighting. The scene has no obvious “frame,” and seems to bleed off the edges of the canvas to infinity. This vague atmosphere mirrors the ambiguous emotions of the monk.
And what exactly is the monk thinking? Friedrich gave us a clue: When this painting was first exhibited, it had a companion piece, which we’ll see next.
• That companion piece now hangs alongside Monk by the Sea.
Abbey Among Oak Trees, 1809-1810: It’s an incredibly bleak scene—a ruined Gothic church, bare trees, and desolate tombstones. Almost unnoticed among the graves is a sad parade of tombstone-like monks bearing a coffin.
Death is a common theme in Friedrich’s work. Between the ages of 7 and 13, Friedrich saw his mother and two sisters die, and he watched his brother drown. This dark canvas seems to hammer home the finality of death.
The one sliver of hope is the dim crescent moon. The monks carry the coffin toward the horizon and the lightening sky, lit by a new moon. Might there be some hope beyond the grave?
Hmmm...
Friedrich lets that thought drift upward above the trees, into the sky, and out the top of the canvas...where it bleeds up until it would have reached that companion painting Monk by the Sea, which originally hung directly above this one. There, one of the monks has wandered off, alone, to a desolate beach. He ponders the death of his fallen brother and the vast unknown that lies beyond this mortal existence.
• You know, I think we could all use something a little cheerier. So find the next painting...
Woman at a Window, 1822: In 1818, the renowned 44-year-old artist married 25-year-old Caroline—the woman in this painting. She leans out the window of Friedrich’s studio. As with so many of Friedrich’s paintings, his subject has her back to us, so we see what she sees: a blue sky and a row of colorful poplar trees.
With his marriage and the birth of three kids, Friedrich’s dark life brightened. His colors get lighter and more vibrant, and he begins adding more flesh-and-blood people to his minimal landscapes.
This painting’s composition is another carefully planned grid. It’s strong three-dimensionality sucks you right into the scene. Notice how the floorboards direct your eye from where we stand to the woman at the window. Your attention soars out the dark studio, past the mast of a moored ship, across the river, to the distant trees and the sunny skies beyond.
• Next up, look for...
Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon, 1818-1825: A couple emerges from a dark forest onto a hillside. They stand and gaze into the deep night sky, lit by a hazy moon. The woman places her hand gently on the man’s shoulder as they pause to contemplate. (By the way, Samuel Beckett said this painting was the inspiration for his play, “Waiting for Godot.”)
• The next two paintings were also intended as companion pieces.
Moonrise over the Sea, 1822: It’s evening, and two women and a man perch atop a rock and watch as ships return to the harbor. As the moon rises through a layer of clouds, it casts a shimmering light across the wide sea and even wider sky.
Although Friedrich rarely talked about the symbolism of his work, he often added intriguing elements that invite interpretation. To some, these ships suggest how we all “sail” through the journey of our lives like ships across the sea, hoping to return to a safe harbor where loved ones await.
The Solitary Tree, 1822: An aging but still-strong tree rises up stoically from a stark landscape. The composition of this work is classic Friedrich—a vertical tree silhouetted against a horizontal landscape, splitting a V-shaped valley in a triangular mountain range.
Notice the tiny shepherd leaning against the tree. It’s as if the presence of man hardly makes a mark on the wide world of nature.
• The biggest painting in the room is...
The Watzmann, 1824-1825: Friedrich often painted actual locations in Germany, like this mountain in Bavaria. A strong proponent of German identity, Friedrich celebrated German topography—which he viewed as being as rugged and fierce as the German people. He was part of the rising movement that would later flower into an independent German nation.
This view looks across a craggy mountain meadow to snow-capped mountains rising beyond. Romantics like Friedrich got high on what they called the “sublime,” a mystical ecstasy inspired by the power of nature. Here, we feel Friedrich’s experience of having his spirit soar upward in its presence.
• Let’s see one last painting as we conclude Friedrich’s life story.
Ruins of Eldena, c. 1824-1825: Friedrich loved to wander through this ruined monastery near his home. The trees overgrowing the eroding arches suggest how nature overtakes civilization, and how time overtakes us all.
Friedrich himself was feeling the effects of time. As he aged, his already eccentric personality settled into extended bouts of depression. He spent more and more time alone, wandering the fields and woods. As a Romantic, he tried to learn the timeless spiritual truths that nature can teach. But just a few years after finishing this painting, Friedrich suffered a stroke. His health declined, and his ability to paint went downhill. At the same time, his style went out of fashion. He died poor, forgotten, and—like the solitary figures in so many of his paintings—alone.
Friedrich’s work languished in obscurity for two generations. When it was finally rediscovered, it had an enormous impact. His hazy atmospherics and light effects would inspire Monet, Whistler, and Turner. His lone figures against bleak backdrops were copied by Expressionists—imagine Munch’s “The Scream.” His meticulously composed patterns of pure color would evolve into purely abstract art—think Mark Rothko.
More than anything, it was Friedrich’s spirit that lived on. His antimaterialism inspired many others who would chose art as a spiritual path. His works celebrate the brave individuals who thumb their nose at society’s expectations and forge their own path through life.
• Whew! Let’s take a break from all that drama. For a complete change of pace, check out nearby Rooms 3.08-3.13, which are arranged in a semicircle at the end of this wing.
These rooms feature paintings in the so-called Biedermeier style (c. 1815-1848), the conservative flip side to Romanticism’s individualism, turbulence, and political radicalism. The adjective bieder means “solid” and “plain,” words that could describe the prosperous and morally upright middle class seen in these canvases, dressed up in their Sunday best. Eduard Gaertner’s Unter den Linden (1852-1853) shows happy Berliners promenading down the boulevard, past the Frederick the Great statue to the Stadtschloss (the now-gone city palace). Biedermeier landscapes are pretty, not dramatic. The style is soft-focus, hypersensitive, super-sweet, and sentimental. The poor are happy, the middle class are happy, and the world they inhabit is perfectly lit.
• Then came the democratic revolutions of 1848, the invention of the camera, Realism, and Impressionism...and all hell broke loose. For a quick look at some of the other trends in Europe of the 1800s, head downstairs to level 2. Walk straight through two big halls into Room 2.03.
This one big room is lined with minor works by big-name French artists. Unlike the carefully composed, turbulent, and highly symbolic paintings of the German Romantics, these scenes appear like simple unposed “snapshots” of everyday life.
Pan the room to see works that, even if not masterpieces, are typical of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masters. There are Renoir’s pink-cheeked girls, Degas’ working girls, Cézanne’s fruit bowls, and Gauguin’s Tahitian girls. Monet’s church scene (View of Vétheuil-sur-Seine, 1880) uses messy blobs of paint to create the effect of shimmering sunlight. In Manet’s In the Conservatory (1879), a woman relaxes on a park bench while a man leans in with a comment. At first, they seem to be strangers. But look at the center of the composition: their two hands, with wedding rings. They’re husband and wife, secure enough in their relationship that they are intimately connected without an outward show of devotion.
• Our tour is over. But if you still want more, it’s easy to find a few other highlights on your map.
In Room 2.14 are two well-known portraits by Franz von Lenbach of world-changing Germans: Otto von Bismarck (Germany’s first prime minister) and the composer Richard Wagner.
Downstairs on level 1, 19th-century Realism reigns, with room after room of small brown canvases of everyday German life in the 1800s. Adolph Menzel made his name painting elegant (non-Realist) scenes of royal gatherings and historical events. But it’s his Realist scenes that lived on. Iron Rolling Mill (Room 1.13) captures the gritty side of the Industrial Age with a warts-and-all look at steelworkers toiling in a hellish factory.
The sculpture collection (Room 1.01—at the entrance to this wing) features classical-looking works by the Danish Thorvaldsen and the Italian Canova. The highlight is the German sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow’s delightful Die Prinzessinnen, showing the dynamic duo of Prussian princesses, Louise and Frederike.
There. You’ve toured the 1800s—from spiritual Nazerenes to emotional Romantics, from stuffy Biedermeiers to elegant Neoclassicism, from gritty Realists to the Impressionists and the dawn of the 20th century.
• If you still have an appetite for more museums—and a combo-ticket burning a hole in your pocket—the next best stop is the Bode Museum, a 10-minute walk away at the northern tip of Museum Island.
Connoisseurs (but not most people) will love this classy, uncrowded, eclectic museum of B-list sculpture, painting, and precious objects. You can browse its highlights—a Byzantine mosaic and one of the world’s best coin collections—in 30 minutes.
The museum is perched at the “prow” of Museum Island, as if rising up from the river. Even if you’re not visiting the galleries, it’s free to step into the lavish lobby, under a great dome, where a statue of Frederick William of Brandenburg on horseback welcomes you. With his curly locks blowing in the wind and wielding his general’s baton, Frederick put Prussia on the map in the 1600s, setting the stage for his great-grandson Frederick the Great a century later. (It’s also free to climb the grand lobby staircase to the charming museum café.)
Cross through the entry lobby, walk straight through the first hall, and step into the “Basilica” hall. From there, go through the door on the left, then work your way back (bearing left) to the corner Room 115, with a glittering mosaic.
The Byzantine Empire was Europe’s beacon of light during the dark centuries after the Fall of Rome, when barbarians roamed the land. Fortunately, the empire had secured the outpost of Ravenna, on Italy’s Adriatic coast, offering a vision of strength, stability, and hope.
Imagine seeing this brilliant mosaic in a church apse back then (A.D. 550). It shows a serene Jesus, who is the very image of youthful vigor. He stands holding a cross in one hand and a book in the other, opened to a comforting message: “Qui Vi Dit Me...” (Whoever has seen me has seen the Father, John 14:9) and “Ego et Pater...” (I and the Father are one; John 10:30).
Flanking Christ are two handsome angels, Michael and Gabriel. All three stand in a flowery meadow, suggesting that they bring a bit of heaven down to troubled mortals on earth. Notice that Christ wears the cross-shaped halo reserved for the Trinity. Above him, in the arch, are 12 doves—a joyous representation of the 12 Apostles. Above that we see Christ again, this time in the traditional pose seen in so many Byzantine churches. He’s the “Pantocrator,” the Ruler of All, seated on a throne, holding a book, and raising his right hand to bless the whole world. He’s flanked by a heavenly host of angels, standing in a sea of fire. The angels blow their horns to announce the Apocalypse—when the old age will be destroyed so a new one can emerge.
• To find the coin collection, retrace your steps to the “Basilica” room, cross to the far end, and take the stairs up under the “Small Dome.” At the top of the stairs, take the left door and circulate around the wing, finding the smaller rooms on the outside of the building. Begin in Room 241.
Browse Room 241 clockwise to get an overview of the collection, which spans 2,700 years of coinage. The “Electrum” from ancient Greece (c. 600 B.C.) is surprisingly sophisticated—a gold-silver alloy coin depicting sphinxes, Pegasuses, and masks. The chronological history starts in Room 242. There are ancient Greek drachmas (c. 500 B.C.) adorned with chariots, bulls, warriors, and rulers. The ancient Romans featured their Caesars. The medieval collection is especially strong in German coins, medals, and document seals.
Room 243 picks up the timeline, going from crude 12th-century coins all the way to 20th-century Deutsche Marks, Berlin Wall medallions, and the 21st-century euro. If you haven’t had enough, hunker down at a computer terminal to explore the rest of the museum’s 500,000 coins. One thing you won’t see is the giant, 100-kilogram gold coin from Canada (worth $1 million Canadian)—known as the “Big Maple Leaf.” It was stolen in a high-profile heist in March 2017.
For museum completists, there’s one more to consider—but if you’re museumed out, it’s definitely skippable. Back out at the south end of the complex, facing Lustgarten, is the Altes (Old Museum). Perhaps the least interesting of the five museums, this building features the rest of Berlin’s Collection of Classical Antiquities—namely, Etruscan, Roman, and Greek art. It also contains Greek and Roman sculptures, vases, and some bronze figurines from the currently closed north wing of the Pergamon Museum.