Deutsches Historisches Museum

The Deutsches Historisches Museum occupies the Zeughaus, a Baroque former Prussian arsenal on Unter den Linden completed in 1730, making it one of the oldest surviving buildings on the boulevard. The museum's permanent collection, housed across the historic Zeughaus, traces German and European history from the early medieval period through the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification, using arms and armor, paintings, everyday objects, political ephemera, and documents to cover more than 1,500 years. A modern glass-and-steel exhibition wing designed by I.M. Pei, completed in 2003, adjoins the Zeughaus and hosts rotating special exhibitions on more focused historical topics. The permanent exhibition is organized chronologically, moving visitors through the Holy Roman Empire, the Reformation, the rise of Prussia, the Napoleonic era, German unification in 1871, the World Wars, the divided postwar decades, and reunification, with particular strength in its collections of political posters, uniforms, and everyday GDR and Federal Republic material culture. The Zeughaus itself required substantial restoration after wartime damage and decades of use as an East German military history museum before reunification, when the collection and building were reorganized under the current national historical mandate. The courtyard features Andreas Schlüter's sculptures of dying warriors, considered significant Baroque relief work, integrated into the arsenal's original decorative program.