Jewish Museum Berlin: an “architectural metaphor” 1
Lucia Signore
ISSN 1127-4883 BTA - Telematic Bulletin of Art, 16th June 2014, n. 716
http://www.bta.it/txt/a0/07/en/bta00716.html
The Jewish Museum Berlin (fig. 1, 2), otherwise called with a longer name that is the result of
continuous changes of mind: «Extension of Jewish Department in the Berlin Museum», is an
architectural masterpiece realized by Daniel Libeskind. This construction is often included
among Deconstructivist architectures, buildings that have lost the static solidity of classical
architecture dissolving in fluid forms that convey big energy to structures that are no longer
architectural boxes.
The Jewish Museum is an anticlassical structure or, using new expression, it is a liquid
architecture whose fluidity depends on zigzag and broken up profile that gets away from
Euclidean world. Architectural fluidity’s concept is not probably understandable and
admissible because it is associated with the art of building that is always taken care to erect
durable, solid and static structures.
But in contemporary age dominated by virtual fluidity of World Wide Web and Cyberspace, it
is clear that the world of solidity and concreteness undergoes the influence of new concepts.
From this «labyrinth without end» that is the Cyberspace, it is taken the element of
disorientation. This is a characteristic of the Jewish Museum built by Libeskind and it is in
conformity with architectural destabilization of Peter Eisenman who was teacher of Daniel
Libeskind and also the theoretician of deconstruction’s concept in architectural context.
1
The labyrinthine characteristic is omnipresent in the Jewish Museum, from the underground to
three exhibition upper floors where the visitor is fluently carried among various objects and
findings that are chaotically preserved and disposed there. So they hamper grid-route with the
black walls of inner voids and they oblige to pass round these obstructions that significantly repropose a “tortuous” history. Chaos, dynamism (both inside and outside) and complexity are
the foundations of the geometry of reference: it is not the Euclidean geometry of order, solidity
and stability, but it is the fractal geometry.
Fig. 1
DANIEL
LIBESKIND,Jewish
Museum, Berlin,
Germany, 1989-1999
Particular of one of the
numerous fronts on
which there are "cuts",
long and narrow
windows opened on the
zinc surface
asymmetrically by reproposing a shattered
design
2
3
There are not geometrical figures anymore, but intersecting lines that don’t create 90-degrees
angles longer by rejecting the classical grid of nine squares that Daniel Libeskind disliked
intensely since he was at Cooper Union School. Marcos Novak’s reflections about this virtual
architecture always mutable, impalpable and difficult to realize, are suitable for the graphic
and building activity of Daniel Libeskind who realized many drawings and plans for an
imaginary and utopian architecture in which Piranesi’s Carceri or Kandinskij’s abstract art
(and I quote only these two examples) are very recurrent. These artists are mentioned by
Marcos Novak because they are the forerunners of Cyberspace’s abstract spaces in which
architecture «aims to become music» , a continuous and mutable symphony, an elusive and
dynamic piece of music like Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in which the art of music is very
important.
4
5
Fig. 2
DANIEL
LIBESKIND,Jewish
Museum, Berlin,
Germany, 1989-1999
Berlin construction erected on Lindenstrasse – built in Kreuzberg quarter, significantly near
the city centre that puts a Jewish small collection up in the past - was constructed from 1989, a
particularly important year for the historical developments of the entire world and for the
progress of German culture (especially with reference to Jewish culture). Horrors and crimes
committed by Nazi prevented to talk with people decimated for a long time; the weight of
shame hushed everything up.
An almost unpronounceable word – Vergangenheitsbewältigung (comparison with the past) –
was coined in the 50’s, but this word was used only thirty years later. Jews could be a problem
in the bipolar world of Cold War, as East Germany and West Germany were separate
politically and ideologically but they were united by a common and sad past. The fall of the
Wall and the consequent reunification allowed German people to admit the horrors and the
crimes that they committed and to recover the memories of the tragic parenthesis of 20thcentury history from the oblivion in which they were sunk. Remember was necessary for
confronting and trying to overcome a collective drama that pooled - and it sometimes still
pools – defeated and winners, survivors and descendants of dead people in a condition of
anxiety and sense of guilty. Historical memory is the fundamental concept of this architectural
project: Holocaust cannot and mustn’t be forgotten because it is the most unmistakable event
of Jewish past that must incite new generations to build a future in which there will not be
tragedies. Kelsey Bankert spoke about traumatic architecture to underline that this structure
not only commemorates a historical tragedy dramatically, but it also helps to overcome this
sorrow with the setting up of therapeutic and cathartic spaces.
6
Fig. 3
DANIEL
LIBESKIND,Jewish
Museum, Berlin,
Germany, 1989-1999
An air photo that shows
the zig-zag profile of the
de-structured Star of
David. Near the
architectonic "blitz"
there are the Tower of
the Holocaust and the
Garden of Exile. On the
other side there is the
Kollegienhaus with the
glass court realized by
Daniel Libeskind in 2007
7
Libeskind is ingenious in the design of this architectural metaphor: every single structural
element and probably the numbers that indicate the sizes and colours of the spaces, the
architectural plan of the whole shows a particular meaning. Libeskind builds thin symbolic
references to various disciplines of humanistic field like historical-philosophical themes, or
History of Art, Music and Literature, besides scientific notions that are necessary for building
a structure. We know the four main sources of this project with absolute certainty: a map of
Berlin’s city, Schönberg’s composition Moses and
Aron, Gedenkbuch and Einbahnstrassewritten by Walter Benjamin.
We wonder what was the utility of the map given that the place of edification was already
established and the architects had inspected the site. The chosen area was near the
Kollegienhaus that was an ancient courthouse – then used as a museum for showing historical
findings - built by Philipp Gerlach in 1735. Libeskind meticulously searched the addresses
where renowned men of culture lived in the eighteenth and nineteenth century on the map.
Then he joined these names in a kind of «marriage» with a simple line. Ironically or out of
thought, the lines on the map produced a star with six points, the Star of David that is the
emblem of Jewish religion and discriminatory symbol in the twentieth century. The couples
are: Rahel Levin Varnaghen with the Lutheran theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (this line
is superimposed on Lindenstrasse where the museum is built), Paul Celan and Mies van der
Rohe, the poet E.T.A. Hoffmann and Friedrich von Kleist. In this typically Jewish “frame”,
Libeskind placed his structure with its forms reproducing again a star with six points, but it is
8
Fig. 4
DANIEL
LIBESKIND,Jewish
Museum, Berlin,
Germany, 1989-1999
Plan
Fig. 5
DANIEL
LIBESKIND,Jewish
Museum, Berlin,
Germany, 1989-1999
Particular of the
windows
broken up and it is reproduced with a twisty form that does not render immediately
understandable its meaning. It is necessary to underline that this contour is visible only by an
aerial view and it seems a lightning so the Berliners use the word blitz to indicate this structure
(fig.3).
The second source is musical: Libeskind focuses his attention on the third act no music of
Arnold Schönberg’s Moses and Aron. This musician was Jewish so he was obliged to leave
Europe in the 1930s because of inflamed anti-Semitic hate. So his musical work that exalts
biblical personalities has remained incomplete and this very concept of incommunicability and
the silence that characterizes the third act inspired Libeskind. He transforms the absence of
sound into voids that are impenetrable spaces that divide the architectural structure. The void is
the most important structural element of this construction because it is particularly meaningful
to indicate physical absence of people murdered in concentration camps, or the silence of
physicists, writers and artists.
Therefore the same Schönberg was victim of Hitler’s hate, so he is remembered like many
other murdered or exiled Jews that left a void and a bitter silence, but the memory at least. In
this museum that is like the sacred places in which we enter with a «processional ritual» , it is
possible to render homage to Holocaust’s victims with a silent prayer or with the reading of
many names that would have filled the voids. So our voice would have modulated a hollow
litany or a lugubrious dirge by reading that interminable list of names then not engraved on the
walls. These names of ghostly identities are not fruits of his amazing fantasy, but they are
written in Gedenkbuch (third font) that are two voluminous books in which there are the names
of deportees with the dates of birth and deportation and the name of concentration camps.
Fig. 6
DANIEL
LIBESKIND,Jewish
Museum, Berlin,
Germany, 1989-1999
Inside beams
9
Fourth and last source is the above-mentioned essay of Walter Benjamin that is a collection of
aphorisms for friends in which surrealistically it is possible to reconstruct the topological and
spiritual profile of Berlin in the 1920s, but by following a not linear and confusing route.
Thoughts, dreams and places are not described consequently, provoking «the sensation of lack
of sense of direction, the fail of spatial and temporal sense (to) reader-visitor» and this
surrealistic peculiarity of loss that makes this literary text similar to the architectural text of
Libeskind, because architecture is a text, as suggested by Derrida.
Fig. 7
DANIEL
LIBESKIND,Jewish
Museum, Berlin,
Germany, 1989-1999
Stylistic comparison
between the Jewish
Museum and the
Kollegienhaus
10
11
Analyzing the urban context in which the Jüdisches Museum is placed, it is possible to observe
the considerable unlikeness between this construction and those built in the past
(Kollegienhaus and houses) on the same side of Lindenstrasse. This museum shares only the
height with other structures in accordance with town-plan. But in front of Kollegienhaus there
is the Academy of Jewish Museum built by Libeskind in 2011. This structure talks with preexisting ones and it recalls the Jewish Museum particularly for the covering (in this case wood)
that is ploughed with diagonal lines and also for the inclination of the entrance’s cube that
recalls the Garden of Exile. The museum is in a vast green area. The green colour is present
both in the lot of construction and in the lying space behind, the glazed court that Libeskind
realized in the square space among three wings of the ancient 18th-century courthouse.
12
Fig. 8
DANIEL
LIBESKIND,Jewish
Museum, Berlin,
Germany, 1989-1999
Particular of the
underground Axes'
intersection
The two gardens were planned independently: the green space behind the Kollegienhaus was
organized by Hans Kollhoff and Arthur Ovaska in line with the style of the 18th-century
palace; the one around Libeskind’s structure by Cornelia Müller, Jan Wehberg and Elmar
Knippschild. They created a space that allows Libeskind’s structure to be integrated in the
surrounding environment by using flagstones and by planting particular and symbolic trees.
The reference to Paul Celan, poet and award-winner man of letters explicitly commemorated
by Libeskind, is very interesting: in a space obtained among building walls, Celan’s court is
accessible from the outside and presents a relief on the floor designed by the poet’s widow
Gisèle Celan-Lestrange.
While the close structures show a composition based on first geometrical forms and volumes
in the light of geometrical analysis – for example the Kollegienhaus is inscribed in a square, or
the houses are disposed rhythmically one in front of the other in a proportional manner that repropose cubes – the Jewish Museum is notably different because it is a structure with a
fragmented development based on an open broken line. By tracing the prolongations of
individual segments that constitute the zigzag line it is not possible to obtain important centres
of projection. The irregular form is produced by two directional lines: one is tortuous and taut
to infinite (blue line) acting as a model for elevation; the other one «straight but broken» (red
line) determines the continuous inner void (fig. 4).
13
14
Fig. 9
DANIEL
LIBESKIND,Jewish
Museum, Berlin,
Germany, 1989-1999
Garden of Exile or
E.T.A. Hoffman Garden.
It is possible to see the
slope of the floor
Fig. 10
PETER
EISENMAN,Memorial
to the Murdered Jews of
Europe, Berlin,
Germany, 1998-2005
The structure is mixed, as a result of the union among continuous and point-shaped structures,
realized with steel pillars that are visible also in the “cuts” on the surface and that exceed the
typical dimensions of a full masonry structure (fig. 5), and with reinforced concrete which is
possible to see in the inner voids. This allows to individualize other differences between the
plans of the museum and the Kollegienhaus because the latter has a full masonry structure - in
line with 18th-century architectural rules – that conveys the solidity and the static nature that
are absent in the fluid museum of Libeskind.
It is interesting to analyze the relationship between full and empty spaces that are subject to a
transposition from the outside to inside and vice versa. The long and thin windows that are the
voids of the external surface take shape inside by means of reinforced concrete pillars (fig. 6)
that are disposed obliquely and are incumbent like «always present menaces» on the principal
stairwell. The pillars are the inner prosecution of the external gaps as well as, by contrast, the
windows are the continuation of the inner girders. Moreover the light contributes to make a
connection between inside and outside, full and empty, because the rays of light that enter
through the windows (or voids precisely) are reflected on white and bare (but full) inside
walls. Following the “anticlassical code”, the windows are all different and are not disposed
sequentially and modularly; instead Gerlach chose to divide the surface horizontally with two
orders of windows and to scan it rhythmically also with pilaster strips that individualize five
rectangular modules vertically (fig. 7).
15
So the design is based on the concept of symmetry: the main module, in which Kollegienhaus’
hallway is placed (but also the Judisches Museum’), is particularly accentuated through bigger
windows, a balcony on the second floor and a tympanum on which there are two allegorical
statues representing Justice and Prudence. It is possible to discern another characteristic that
Fig. 11
MENASHE
KADISHMAN,Shalechet
(Fallen leaves), Memory
Void.
The skylights visible
through the air photo
illuminate the void and
represent one of the two
directional lines
distinguishes the two buildings from a bird’s eye view: the ancient courthouse has a red
mansard-roof, while Libeskind’s building has a flat roofing (a homage to Schinkel who, with
his flat roofings, revolutionized 19th-century Berliner architecture) on which it is possible to
see pipes and all parts of different systems. All is displayed, nothing is hidden in the masonry.
16
Also Daniel Libeskind appeals to labyrinthine scheme in accordance with the principles of
Decostructivism, of which he is a member (even if he does not like to be defined as such), for
undermine the classical sense of direction produced from the traditional architectural boxes.
This way the visitor is involved both emotionally and physically. Heart, mind and all senses
are stimulated to make the visitor identify himself with a Jew. So the usual practice to put
passively the visitor in or in front of a structure is changed. The trouble, uncertainty and
anxiety are considerable when going into the museum or even before entering it because it is
possible to notice an anomaly by staying on the Lindenstrasse: the contemporary building that
appears autonomous looking onto the courthouse – that is so different for colour, style and
form – instead depends tightly on it because Libeskind’s museum does not have a hallway.
This choice that is in line with an anticlassical canon – in fact the hallway is often accentuated
in the classical tradition to put it in a central position into the symmetric decoration that is
typical of modular planning of the front, like the Kollegienhaus – is symbolic. In a competitive
examination it was clearly expressed that the building would have been erected significantly in
the triangular-shaped area near the Kollegienhaus and it would have been presumably
autonomous. Instead Libeskind has connected the two buildings through a steep stairway and
an underground passage that takes - like he said- to the «roots» of Berliner history in which it
is not possible to separate the German history from the Jewish one. So whoever wants to visit
the new Jewish Museum has to go into the adjoining 18th-century building and go down
through some stairs that provoke a new and strong sense of uncertainty because it is impossible
to see what is at the end of the staircase.
The insecurity (especially in the first part of the route) makes the visitors have something in
common with the dramatic experience of exile, of the last journey towards death and of the
resumption of life (for the survivors) after so much suffering. Hebrews did not have certainties
and assurances when they left for new, unknown and distant lands; they did not have
awareness of destination of that journey – for many without return – towards the concentration
camps; the survivors did not have the serenity and the peace to turn their attention to a new life
that brought the unforgettable signs of a painful past.
So, how is it possible to re-create those unpleasant sensations with reference to classical
architecture, to its forms and its reassuring principles which inspired the art of the enemy? It
was an obliged choice to reject the 90-degrees angle for the acute angle, to incline the floor to
tire the visitor during the visit, to make the windows smaller to prevent too much light from
entering and avoid contact with the exterior.
17
So the grey atmosphere of the concentration camps is recreated, in which the people lived in
half-light, in complete alienation, having only the certainty to have been imprisoned, to be
maltreated and probably to be led towards death. For an emotional or sensible architecture in
which all senses – also the ones before disregarded- are stimulated to promote «sensorial
Fig. 12
DANIEL
LIBESKIND,Felix
Nussbaum Museum,
Osnabrück, Germany,
1994-1998.
An air photo
Fig. 13
DANIEL
LIBESKIND,Felix
Nussbaum Museum,
Osnabrück, Germany,
1994-1998.
Particular
Fig. 14
MICHA ULLMAN,
Bibliothek, Berlin,
Germany, 1995
Photo Courtesy of Lucia
Signore
perception in the aesthetic experience and in the cultural fruition» it is compulsory to reject
the classical statement of the box and the established planning of the expositive route that
required a common state of visitors. Instead they have to play an active role, search for the
right way and therefore change their sense of orientation.
18
This is further complicated in the underground space built in reinforced continuous-septum
concrete in which there are three passages that are all serving spaces (or spaces of connection)
and served spaces because it is possible to see cases in which there are objects of some Jews
(fig. 8). After the descent through the staircase between the two buildings, the visitor is on the
Axis of the Continuity which is a long corridor which ends with another staircase that brings to
the surface. So it is possible to continue the route by following the signs of history even if it is
possible to do it only after a purification by crossing the other two axes. Like a “second
Dante”, the tourist has to go down to infernal abyss and he/she has to experiment the absolute
evil produced principally by the Shoah. Even if various findings telling of two thousand years
of history are silently preserved in this museum, Daniel Libeskind decided to stress the most
tragic historical event because it interlaces with the past and the future of Jews, but also with
those of all humanity.
At first the visitor is invited to cross the Axis of Exile that ends with a trapezoidal wall of glass
near a door that takes to Garden of Exile, otherwise called E.T.A. Hoffman Garden. It is a
served space with an area of forty-nine square metres (fig. 9). It is an open space but
paradoxically claustrophobic because the colours of the nature are overcome by the grey and
the grass is replaced by concrete; because it is not possible to see the sky; because the visitor
finds himself in a forest of pillars and over them, through an overturning, there are olive trees.
So it is not a classical garden, it is not an oasis of peace, it is not a green space in which it is
possible to admire the classical natural views: by entering this garden the sense of alienation is
very strong and it induces to escape. Here the labyrinthine element is particularly evident and
the lack of balance that forces some people to lean to pillars, by stimulating also the touch, is
caused not only by the use of equal and equidistant pillars but also by the inclination of six
degrees of the floor.
The same expedient was used by Peter Eisenman for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of
Europe in Berlin (fig. 10). Also in this space, which appears like a big crackle by Burri, the
apprehension is very strong when walking through two thousand and seven hundred
parallelepipeds of increasing height. Fabio Colonnese defined the E.T.A. Hoffman Garden
«the most labyrinthine interpretation of the hypostyle hall» the ceiling of which is the sky that
leans on the soft foliage of the olive trees that are planted on the top of the forty-nine pillars to
symbolize the regeneration after the tragedy and –as Zambelli said – the adaptability of the
“people without earth”. The number of the pillars is not fortuitous but it is symbolic: fortyeight pillars filled with Berliner earth represent the year 1948 (the date of birth of the
Palestine); the forty- nine placed in the middle of the area and filled with Palestinian earth
represent the city of Berlin in which the remarkable Jewish community played an important
role not only for economy but also for culture. Libeskind describes this garden as the «wreck
of history» , the space in which every certainty fails and contrasting feelings collide like
despair and hope represented by the green of the foliage.
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20
21
After this dramatic experience, the visitor has to face another one more dramatic: the
Holocaust. Physically the route is challenging because the Axes of Exile and of the Holocaust
have a floor inclination and the body is submitted to a strong change of temperature. The Axis
of the Holocaust has laterally trapezoidal cases containing objects of the victims of the Shoah,
but it is necessary to get close to see them because the cases are closed with opaque glass as if
the objects were relics. By contrast this passage, that intersects significantly the other two,
ends with a black door that takes in another space in which there is no warmth because the
trapezoidal tower called Voided Void (a served space) intentionally lacks heating and cooling
systems.
The heavy infernal door is slammed behind the visitor making a thud that roars in the darkness
of the tower illuminated only by a slit. There is nothing in this claustrophobic space, only a
staircase (perhaps Jacob’s Ladder that joins earthly world and heavenly world) which is not
reachable. There is no escape. In this space of death it is possible to hear only the roar of the
metal door from which other “deportees” pass and the voices of children who play in the near
kindergarten. The tourist hears the sound of life that swarms out of this oppressive space that
recalls the chimneys of crematoriums , or gas chambers or also the wagons in which the Jews
were condensed during their last journey. Actually the light that enlightens the darkness in the
tower recalls Yaffa Eliach’s book Non ricordare…non dimenticare: l’Olocausto raccontato
con la speranza chassidica nell’umanità. Initially Libeskind thought to build a big void room
to suggest the image of a gas chamber, but the tale of this woman distorted his projects. Yaffa
Eliach remembers her journey: she saw a white line (probably a cloud or a trail of an airplane)
that gave her the hope to see again the sky. And it happened.
22
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24
Also in the underground it is possible to see two voids in the learning center on the right of the
staircase. It is possible to arrive to the voids through a zig-zag course created by different
separators. The only accessible void is the Memory void which is reachable through the Eric F.
Ross Gallery on the first floor where temporary exhibitions are organized. In the Memory
voidthere is the installation Shalechet (Fallen leaves) created by the Israeli artist Menashe
Kadishman: many bronze faces of different sizes and with open mouths that silently shout
completely cover the floor (fig. 11).
Now we have to identify ourselves with the anti-Semites and trample on the dignity of
“different” men, women and children: by walking on those faces it is not possible to feel any
pleasant sensation because the noise is very disturbing and the run is rough. So the visitor runs
the risk of falling, hurting himself because a physical fall becomes the symbol of a spiritual
fall. After this cathartic journey it is possible to continue and to discover other fundamental
events of Jewish history by following the Staircase of Continuity or Sackler Staircase (from
the name of a supporter of the museum). Oblique beams of cement hang over it and a white
wall is erected at the edge. By turning left the expositive route starts and it allows reviving
Jewish history from the Middle Age to our days through artistic objects, dresses, papers,
photographs, small models and tales that are visible and audible by means of many different
interactive objects that stimulate all the senses.
The rout is labyrinthine also in this only zig-zag passage that does not have rooms as in a
classical museum, but small cosy or raised spaces that are obtained by zig-zag or trapezoidal
separators or by voids, recognizable from the black colour of the walls, that cross the whole
structure. The expositive spaces are illuminated by artificial lights because the natural one that
filters through the zinc-plated blanket, on which there are one thousand and five hundred
windows that represent the piece of the shattered Star of David, is very dim.
As for the colours chosen to paint the walls, Marco Biraghi talked about
«cromoclastia» because the predominating colours - or non-colours- are white and black with
the intermediate grey for the six voids that are symbolically built with unrefined concrete. It is
a matter of journalistic colours that are suitable for the narration, for a sad narration that
remembers many histories equalized by a tragic epilogue. Grey is also used for the external
covering made of zinc that permits to change the colour of the surface – that is destined to
become blue (this is another element that makes this structure mutable depending on temporal
fluidity, on Eraclito’s panta rei) - and to make an umpteenth and fine reference to the more
known and tragic events of Jewish history that are remembered in the underground also by
means of the Raphael Roth Learning Center. Hugh Aldersy-Williams understands the
metaphoric value of zinc through a reference to psychoanalysis, to the oneiric world, to the
interpretation of dreams, because this metal is associated to emigration (symbolized by the
Garden of Exile) and to the death because it is used to close the coffins. In fact the researcher
defines this structure like «a big sarcophagus» that contains the ashes of the thousands of
victims of the Holocaust (represented by the trapezoidal Tower) and to preserve the memory.
25
26
I think that the ashes are represented by the sand containing a sort of a trapezoidal seededpatch located in the outside garden. The trapezium, a geometrical figure that is continually
used for spaces which represent void, absence and silence, allows us to get a subtle and
presumed reference to the setting of the concentration camp. The connection is with the first
lager built in Dachau where the crematory ovens, symbolized, as I remember, by the Tower,
were placed in a trapezoidal plot. This geometrical form is also present in the Felix Nussbaum
Museum in which a Jewish painter killed in a concentration camp in 1944 is remembered and
in the plot of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe erected by Peter Eisenman.
27
From the summary description it is possible to understand that Daniel Libeskind has been
particularly involved emotionally by planning this construction as if his parents, who were
interned and who were forced to do continuous escapes after the liberation, had transmitted
him their pain genetically. Tales, papers and discrimination permitted Daniel Libeskind to win
and to materialize a project for the first time. The Jewish Museum Berlin is the first
construction erected by him in parallel with the Felix Nussbaum Museum in Osnabrück (figg.
12, 13) when he was fifty-year old. Previously he devoted himself to a teaching career and to
graphic activity in which the echo of Metaphysics, Surrealism and Cubism (but not only) is
very recurrent. So, why did Libeskind manage to overcome a very long period of pure
conception exactly in that moment and with this project? Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani asked
this question to him in 1991 and he answered that «idea, method and desire» melted in relation
of continuity and evolution in comparison with what he had done previously.
28
29
Many announcements of a competitive examination are on his writing-desk but he chooses
only those in which he can convey a message and the Jewish Museum is one of these. In his
autobiography he says that we have to “read” his architectures like a text , «destabilizing
architectural texts» , as Eisenman says, that are subject to different interpretations and that
present many references to other writings of different natures. This metaphor strengthens
further the connection with the philosophical-literary world from which the De-constructivism
derives. With this name it is classified a group of architectural works in which «repressed
impurities» re-emerge and through which it is possible to deliver a new architectural language
in the past, sometimes without consideration.
30
31
32
33
The project of Jewish Museum is known with the name Between the lines probably by
recalling also Eisenman’s between. This architect approached deconstruction theories to
destabilize architecture since the 1980s and he defined the between «a juxtaposition of
structures» in which one does not prevail on another. He talked about «middle interstice forms
that admit the irrational in the rational, so as the presumed ugly in the presumed beauty whose
respective borders are not now so distinct and universally recognizable yet».
34
It is possible to notice this mixing of different elements also in the work done of Libeskind
who creates “harmonic contrasts” by means of approaching stylistically different structures:
for example the Jewish Museum is a contemporary and liquid structure linked to the
eighteenth-century that has the traditional plan of a box. Libeskind defines harmony what is
considered a contrast in a banal way and he explains this concept with a musical image:
disparate pieces that show many differences are included in the whole of classical music and
yet they live together under the same name and their performances one after the other don’t
produce any violent contrast.
35
The reference to the musical world is recurrent in the treatises about Libeskind’s work because
he did not forsake this big passion cultivated since he was a child and then only apparently set
aside for graphic and architecture. The title of the project has a literary and musical
background: the lines are not made of thought; they are not only the drawn and intersecting
lines to create the inner voids, but they are also the lines of the staff on which he showed
graphically and descriptively his project to submit it to the judgment of the committee. The
connection with music was troublesome in the past because he couldn’t play the piano when he
was a child because this instrument could arise suspicion. He was obliged to play an accordion
that was used for folk music and so it was not the object of anti-Semitic retaliation. Also he
won a prestigious prize with this instrument. Even when he decided to dedicate his time to the
design, music continued to have an important role and it is confirmed by the continuous
references to the paintings of Kandinskij (influenced by Arnold Schönberg ) whose abstract art
gets inspiration from the music that is not regulated by the principle ofmimesis imposed by the
academic culture in the figurative context.
36
Libeskind has been always anti-academic by rejecting the comparison with the 90-degrees
angle, the «nine square grid problem» and Euclidian geometry since he was at
school. «(Libeskind) non utilizza il mondo reazionario dei morfemi classici, quanto le
immagini appartenenti alle esperienze avanguardiste del Novecento» , Antonello Marotta said
and the Jewish Museum shows it. So it had been necessary to wait ten years before seeing the
completion of the construction at the risk to forsake the work and to rectify (suffice it to think
of external walls that were sloping at first). Few people believed in his work so eccentric and
almost utopian and also the best architects of the twentieth century were skeptical, as, for
example, Philip Johnson who gaped when Libeskind showed him the project. And yet he made
it by resisting tenaciously the reviews like the one published on Casabella in November 1989,
in which it is possible to read an article in which the winner is announced, but the second best
project, Walter Nobel’s, is exalted. Also I remember that the museum opened empty in 1999
(the same year Libeskind won the Architecture Prize) recording a conspicuous number of
visitors.
37
38
39
This event caused other controversies after the official inauguration in September 2001 (a very
significant date for Libeskind because of the downfall of the Twin Towers) because it spread
the idea that the museum, considered a three-dimensional artwork, had to remain empty
because the emotional impact would be superior. The sense of emptiness, nihilism and absence
would be stronger; the visit would be more exciting. In fact Bruno Zevi defined this structure
«Espressionismo a scala metropolitana, non più pago di urlare, deciso a rievocare l’orrore in
modo gelido, tagliente, spietato». The reference to Expressionism well recaps the work of
Libeskind and of all Jew artists because by means of this artistic movement artists can express
their emotions through disturbing and monstrous figures, through distorted images that it is not
possible to see in the nature because they are not realized with the classical principle
ofmimesis. And doesn’t Libeskind plan architectures that break up with the classical rudiments
to better express his reflections and his pains? The reference to Expressionism becomes more
suitable linguistically and terminologically because the German Expressionist group chose the
name Die Brücke (that means Bridge) by taking inspiration from Nietzsche’s philosophy and
Kelsey Bankert used the image of the bridge to indicate the function of this building that is an
«architecture of trauma»: « a bridge between the memory of tragedy and the future of
traumatized people».
40
41
42
These references reaffirms the liquid anti-classicism which is at the basis of architecture and of
this architecture, or «anarchitettura» that can be included in the group of anti-monuments
erected in Berlin after the reunification. The choice to reject the monumentality and the
classical rudiments is symbolic because these characteristics have been exasperated from
Nazism, so the artists called to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust chose a style
opposed to the one used to glorify the Nazi ideology. For example in the German city of
Kassel with the “anti-fountain” built in the square in front of the municipal building, Hoheisel
overturned the monument because the old neo-Gothic fountain built by a Jew entrepreneur and
demolished at the end of the 1930s was rebuilt but in the opposite direction. So the water does
not gush upwards but it converges in the earth. It is possible to render the memory more living
by re-proposing its absence rather than restoring its original aspect. Returning to Berlin, the
concept of absence and emptiness is re-proposed also by Micha Ullman at Bebelplatz (fig. 14)
where twenty thousand books have been burned by Nazi in 1933 and the memory of this sad
event is materialized by a window opened on the floor and trough which it is possible to see an
empty underground bookcase. It is necessary to put it in connection to Libeskind’s voids in the
Jewish Museum because the message the two architects want to communicate is the same:
remember even if there is not anything anymore.
43
«Only the spirit of the books and the people remains; they meet each other in the heavens».
After the construction of the Jewish Museum Daniel Libeskind has become an Archistar and
many countries in the world ask him to leave his signature through a building and so he is
forced to move continuously. Like an old Jew, Libeskind is a “nomadic architect” who, since
he was a child, has been forced to emigrate and look for a place in which it was not necessary
to compare himself with “diversity”. The United States and particularly the Bronx gave him
serenity and liberty which is symbolized by the most famous statue in the world that was also
the first image appeared to him when he disembarked in that land. Libeskind has started again
to ravel for specializations, then for teaching career and now for construction of buildings: he
still is a stateless person but now he leads his existence under the banner of nomadism with a
different spirit.
English translation revised and corrected by Giulia Martina Weston.
NOTE
1 M. NOVAK, Architetture liquide nel ciberspazio, in Cyberspace. I primi passi nella realtà virtuale, Padova, F.
Muzzio, 1993, p. 257.
2 Fabio Colonnese says that the grid-labyrinth recalls World Wide Web’s hyper textual models because they
agree rather with liquid, mutable and pulsating virtual architectures than static construction of real world.
3 I suggest the following texts for investigation: N. SALA, G. CAPPELLATO, Architetture della complessità: la
geometria frattale tra arte, architettura e territorio, Milano, F. Angeli, 2004.
4 A. MAROTTA, Daniel Libeskind, Roma, Edilstampa, 2007, p. 25.
5 M. NOVAK 1993, p. 261.
6 V. VANNUCCINI, F. PEDRAZZI, Piccolo viaggio nell’anima tedesca, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2005, p. 65.
7 K. BANKERT, The Architecture of Trauma: Daniel Libeskind in New York City and Berlin, CreateSpace
Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.She examined carefully studies of the psychoanalytic nature effects on
people that suffered from collective dramas and then she analyzed two buildings by Daniel Libeskind erected
with the same emotional participation: the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Ground Zero project to restore the
quarter in which Twins Towers rose to life. Even if there are differences between the two structures, their projects
are very similar for the concept of drama associated with notion of absence and materialized by means of
architectural void. Impracticable and most significant spaces of Berliner architectural structure are the six voids
and the Voided Void, like New York depth of twenty-one metres – where Libeskind went down with his wife
Nina and where he saw the retaining wall – is the main core of the sophisticated New York project. That
impressive wall – a wall that would have inundated the city if it had collapsed – is the crucial point of a project
like the Berliner voids in which the victims’ absence materializes itself. Also this wall is the only physical proof
of that architectural whole shattered. One of the differences is the time passed between the tragic event and the
architectural commemoration: New Yorkers set to work immediately not to forget and overcome the drama;
instead it was necessary to wait many years in Germany because of political reasons and because the authors of
“tragic sacrifice” were German themselves.
8 S. CRICHTON, D. LIBESKIND, Breaking Ground. Un’avventura tra architettura e vita, New York, Sperling
& Kupfer, 2005, p. 87. Libeskind enumerates the six names that constitute the six vertices of Star of David in
these pages in which there is the list of sources and he uses the verb «to marry» to indicate the connection of
respective addresses by specifying the couples of names. The personalities mentioned by Libeskind are
particularly important because they had particularly opposed existences that are characterized by exiles or
suicides. For example Paul Celan threw himself in the river Seine when he was fifty-year old after continuous
moves in many cities.I suggest another book for deepening: L. SACCHI, Daniel Libeskind: Museo Ebraico,
Berlino, Torino, Testo & Immagine, 1998, pp. 50-51. Other references are in the following essay: D.
LIBESKIND, Trauma, in Image and remembrance: representation and the Holocaust, a cura di S. Hornstein e F.
Jacobowitz, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2003, pp. 43-59.
9 L. SACCHI 1998, p. 59.
10 W. BENJAMIN, Strada a senso unico, a cura di Giulio SCHIAVONI, Torino, Einaudi, 2006, p. IX. The
figure of Ariadne that allows to exit from Benjamin’s labyrinth is Asia Lacis, the woman loved by the writer that
dedicates a street to her (the street opened in his hearth). The woman is called «ENGINEER» with capital letters.
This work was dear to the Constructivists – as Giulio Schiavoni remembers – who were exponents of an artistic
avant-garde Russian movement that is inspired by Cubism and Futurism, movements that are connected with
Deconstructivism for anti-academic character and for the concept of separation into parts. Constructivist artists
are brought back to life by Deconstructivist artists, as Mark Wigley said (he was the curator of the exhibition on
Deconstructivist Architecture at MoMA in 1988 with Philip Johnson).
11 Jacques Derrida is a philosopher of the twentieth century who elaborated the theory of deconstruction tied
initially to literary text in which it is possible to pick different explanatory levels by means of division of the
whole text in many small parts. Then these remarks have extended to architecture that is considered a
metaphorical expression of many messages like literature. Initially the word “deconstruction” was used, then
“decostructionism” and from 1988 “deconstructivism”. An exhibition entitled Deconstructivist Architecturewas
organized in New York and the curators chose this name by referring terminologically to artisticarchitectural movements of the twentieth century. Derrida moved his idea from literary context
to architecturalambit thanks to the help of two well-known architects: Bernard Tschumi and Peter Eisenman. The
latter, who was a teacher of Daniel Libeskind at the Cooper Union School, examined carefully this concept to
make his architecture nearest to Jewish culture’s artistic rules and he did it through copious drafts of treatises and
also structures that rely on this composition. With reference to C. ROSETI, La decostruzione e il
decostruttivismo: pensiero e forma dell’architettura, Roma, Gangemi, 1997.
12 The Academy of Jewish Museum – built where there was a flower market in the past – is made of three main
bodies in which there are an auditorium, a library with reading rooms and the entrance. Two letters of Jewish
alphabet, Alef and Bet, are re-proposed in form of skylights on the cube of the entrance to underline the use of this
construction. Also the building material has a symbolic significance and so it is possible to connect this structure
with the Jewish Museum. On the left side of the front there is the following phrase translated in various
languages: «Hear the truth, whoever speaks it».
13 B. ZEVI, Libeskind, in L’architettura: cronache e storia, n. 7, luglio- agosto 1994.
14 I believe that this outline is re-proposed also in the garden that surrounds Libeskind’s building because there
are two long intersecting slabs of cement on which there are a straight line and an another one broken in ten
segments. However it is not a three-dimensional representation of the project because the straight line would have
had to intersect all ten segments. Therefore probably the architects made only a reference to directional lines and
to lines of thought. They did not reproduce the intersection of the lines faithfully, perhaps also because of the
small space.
15 M. ZAMBELLI, Museo Ebraico a Berlino, in Sopralluoghi, Arch’it, www.architettura.it/sopralluoghi, 24
settembre 2000.
16 From the top it is possible to see two parallel skylights that represent one of the two directional lines (the red
line of fig. 4). The skylights illuminate the voids and produce a luminous contrast between the dark expositive
spaces that are illuminated with artificial lights and the void and impenetrable spaces that are instead very bright.
17 The architectural solutions mentioned are typical of a building erected with an «anticlassical code» that is
explained by Bruno Zevi in an essay published in 1973. It looks like that his indications are followed in the next
ten years when many deconstructivist projects were realized by some future Archistars. Bruno Zevi speaks about
an architectural language that is dead: it is that of Classic tradition that demands a careful research because some
drifted apart from Beaux Arts, we did not perceive that there are slight asymmetries even in the sacred place of
classic of the Athenian acropolis. I indicate the following essay for further investigation: B. ZEVI, Il linguaggio
moderno dell’architettura: guida al codice anticlassico, Torino, Einaudi, 1973.
18 I. PEZZINI, Architetture sensibili. Il Museo Ebraico e il Monumento alle Vittime dell’Olocausto a Berlino,
in EǀC, Rivista on-line dell’ AISS Associazione Italiana Studi Semiotici, www.ec-aiss.it, 16 ottobre 2009.
19 F. COLONNESE, Il labirinto e l’architetto, Roma, Kappa, 2006, p. 297.
20 M. ZAMBELLI 2000.
21 D. LIBESKIND, Jewish Museum Berlin, Berlino, G+A Arts International, 2000, p. 41.
22 I. PEZZINI 2009.
23 M. ZAMBELLI 2000.
24 S. CRICHTON, D. LIBESKIND 2005, p. 53.
25 M. BIRAGHI, A. FARLENGA, Architettura del Novecento. Teorie, scuole, eventi, Torino, Einaudi, 2012, p.
193.
26 H. ALDERSEY – WILLIAMS, Favole periodiche. La vita avventurosa degli elementi chimici, Milano,
Mondolibri, 2011.
27 Many debates have been made about the plans of concentration camps. Some of them, like that of Treblinka,
have been prepared in trapezoidal plots. By using aerial photographs and confused and imprecise testimonies of
survivors, historians have tried to reconstruct those dead spaces dismantled before the enemies’ arrival. Despite
the levelings and the plantation of lupines grafted in those boundless plots, some tracks are yet visible and the
researchers continue to reconstruct the tragic profiles of the lager with these information.
28 There are many affinities between the museums for the de-structured architectural plan and for the symbolism.
The museum at Osnabrück was erected to remember the unknown Jewish painter Felix Nussbaum. Umpteenth
victim of Aryan race’s hate, he was interned with his wife and after shifted to the concentration camp of
Auschwitz from which he did not return. His pictorial production is made of self-portraits realized during the
exile in narrow spaces that Libeskind wanted to recreate in the middle part of the structure (it is two metres wide).
Also here Libeskind uses expedients that produce a sense of claustrophobia for the identification: for example the
visitor has difficulty to go out (instead in the Jewish Museum the visitor does not find the entrance as if it is
difficult to have an approach with Jewish history). I cite some articles published on reviews: M. DE
MICHELIS, Museo Felix Nussbaum, Osnabrück, Germania, in Domus n. 809, novembre 1998, pp. 20-27; D.
LIBESKIND, The Felix Nussbaum, Osnabrück, Germany, in A+U: Architecture and Urbanism, n. 12, dicembre
1998, pp. 82-101; C. WEGSCHEIDER, Museo Felix Nussbaum a Osnabrück, in L’industria delle costruzioni, n.
328, febbraio 1999, pp. 6-17.
29 D. LIBESKIND, Tra metodo, idea e desiderio, in Domus 731, 1991, pp. 17-28.
30 S. CRICHTON, D. LIBESKIND 2005, p. 89.
31 C. ROSETI 1997.
32 M. BIRAGHI, A. FARLENGA, 2012, p. 283. This expression has been pronounced by Mark Wigley during
the presentation of the exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture to underline the connection with the
Constructivism that has been deleted from Stalin’s Historical Realism, because, like the other dictators, Stalin
wanted to restore Classicism to show a golden image of himself. Like psychoanalysts, the architects of the 1980s
remove the taboos imposed to the artistic disciplines for long time.
33 I appeal to the above- mentioned essay of Bruno Zevi. He individualized anomalies not only in the classical
world of Greeks and Romans, but also consequentially in the Renaissance that is inspired by the classic and in
which he individualized the presence of architects that, even if highly representative of the Italian Reinassance,
are sometimes anti-classical. A Resounding example is Michelangelo whose project for the square of
Campidoglio in Rome or that for the fortification walls in Florence breaks with the classical rudiments of
proportion, symmetry and modulation. He mentioned also Borromini, Palladio, defined «no placing» by Giulio
Carlo Argan, and with a chronological jump Le Corbusier who elaborated the Five points of new Architecture to
research freedom (watchword in anticlassical architecture) and Wright whose structures are erected with
«democratic freedom», a freedom suppressed by the «dictatorship of the straight line».
34 Translation from C. ROSETI 1997, p. 126.
35 The approach of stylistically different buildings that belong to different ages is recurrent in Libeskind’s works.
For example it is evident in the Felix Nussbaum Museum that rises close to a bridge of the XVII century.
Libeskind used it to valorize it and integrated it in the project by covering it with new materials and by using it as
the entrance of the new construction.
36 Arnold Schönberg took part in the development of artistic culture in the first part of the twentieth century, not
only in the musical context but also in the figurative ambit through his participation to the Der Blau Reiterof
which Kandinskij was an important exponent. Schönberg was the promoter of the dodecaphonic method and of
atonalism that are influenced from Expressionism. He refused the hierarchical relation of notes and their temporal
sequence with an «emancipation of the dissonance» in Bruno Zevi’s definition in his essay entitledEbraismo e
architettura.
37 Libeskind appeals (not exclusively) to the fractal geometry that studies the forms of nature. Casualness,
disorder and complexity are predominant. These characteristics are subdued in the classical structures that are
realized with precision, order and modular structural simplicity. Art, that has been related to nature since the
origins, portrays the forms of fractal geometry, as the craggy engravings, or Egyptian capitals and, by doing a
chronological jump, some projects in which there is the self-similarity principle which Michelangelo and Palladio
show. By using sophisticated electronic instruments, the architects of contemporary times try their strength in the
planning of complex buildings that recall natural forms in their unlikelihood appeal. Suffice it to think of
the architectural flower designed by Frank O. Gehry: the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. N. SALA, G.
CAPPELLATO 2004.
38 A. MAROTTA 2007, p. 21.
39 L’ampliamento del Berlin-Museum, in Casabella n. 562, novembre 1989, pp.31-32.
40 Even if Libeskind was born in Poland in 1946, he feels American because he found peace only in the United
States after many transfers narrated in his autobiography. As an American he experienced a new collective drama:
the attack to the Twin Towers. Also in this case, the strong emotional involvement allowed him to win the
competition announcement for the reconstruction of Ground Zero in which he re-used and adapted to new
circumstances some important concepts that are fundamental in the Berliner project.
41 B. ZEVI, Ebraismo e architettura, Firenze, Giuntina, 1993, p. 81.
42 K. BANKERT 2013, p. 9.
43 C. ROSETI 1997, p. 44.
CHRONOLOGY
Publication of competition
announcement:
1988
Presentation of the project:
June 1989
Laying of the foundation stone:
November 9ͭ ͪ, 1992
Period of construction:
1993 – 1999
Date of completion:
January 22, 1999
Opening:
1999 (The Museum was empty)
Prize-giving:
Libeskind received the German
Architectural Award in 1999
Setting up of collection:
1999 – 2001
Official inauguration:
September 13, 2001
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ALDERSEY – WILLIAMS 2011
Hugh ALDERSEY WILLIAMS, Favole periodiche. La vita avventurosa degli elementi
chimici, Milano, Mondolibri, 2011.
BANKERT 2013
Kelsey BANKERT, The Architecture of Trauma: Daniel Libeskind in New York City and
Berlin, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.
BENJAMIN 2006
Walter BENJAMIN , Strada a senso unico, a cura di Giulio SCHIAVONI, Torino, Einaudi,
2006.
BIRAGHI 2012
Marco BIRAGHI, Alberto FARLENGA, Architettura del Novecento. Teorie, scuole, eventi,
Torino, Einaudi, 2012.
CASABELLA 1989
L’ampliamento del Berlin-Museum, in Casabella n. 562, novembre 1989, pp.31-32.
COLONNESE 2006
Fabio COLONNESE, Il labirinto e l’architetto, Roma, Kappa, 2006.
CRICHTON, LIBESKIND 2005
Sarah CRICHTON, Daniel LIBESKIND, Breaking ground. Un’avventura tra architettura e
vita, New York, Sperling & Kupfer, 2005.
DE MICHELIS 1998
Marco DE MICHELIS, Museo Felix Nussbaum, Osnabrück, Germania, in Domus, n. 809,
novembre 1998, pp. 20-27.
LIBESKIND 1991
Daniel LIBESKIND, Tra metodo, idea e desiderio, in Domus 731, 1991, pp. 17-28.
LIBESKIND 1998 FELIX NUSSBAUM MUSEUM
ID., The Felix Nussbaum, Osnabrück, Germany; and the Jewish Museum, Berlin, in A+U:
Architecture and Urbanism, n. 12, dicembre 1998, pp. 82-101; pp. 102-121.
LIBESKIND 2000
ID., Jewish Museum Berlin, Berlino, G+A Arts International.
LIBESKIND 2003
ID., Trauma, in Image and remembrance: representation and the Holocaust, a cura di Shelley
Hornstein e Florence Jacobowits, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2003, pp. 43-59.
MAROTTA 2007
Antonello MAROTTA, Daniel Libeskind, Roma, Edilstampa, 2007.
PEZZINI 2009
Isabella PEZZINI, Architetture sensibili. Il Museo Ebraico e il Monumento alle Vittime
dell’Olocausto a Berlino, in EǀC, Rivista on-line dell’ AISS Associazione Italiana Studi
Semiotici, www.ec-aiss.it, 16 ottobre 2009.
ROSETI 1997
Claudio ROSETI, La decostruzione e il decostruttivismo : pensiero e forma
dell'architettura,Roma, Gangemi, 1997.
SACCHI 1998
Livio SACCHI, Daniel Libeskind: Museo Ebraico, Berlino, Torino, Testo & Immagine, 1998.
SALA, CAPPELLATO 2004
Nicoletta SALA, Gabriele CAPPELLATO, Architetture della complessità: la geometria
frattale tra arte, architettura e territorio, Milano, F. Angeli, 2004.
VANNUCCINI, PEDRAZZI 2005
Vanna VANNUCCINI, Francesca PEDRAZZI, Piccolo viaggio nell’anima tedesca, Milano,
Feltrinelli, 2005.
WEGSCHEIDER 1999
Christian WEGSCHEIDER, Museo Felix Nussbaum a Osnabrück, in L’industria delle
costruzioni, n. 328, febbraio 1999, pp. 6-17.
ZAMBELLI 2000
Matteo ZAMBELLI, Museo Ebraico a Berlino, in Sopralluoghi,
Arch’it,www.architettura.it/sopralluoghi, 24 settembre 2000.
ZEVI 1973 ANTICLASSICO
Bruno ZEVI, Il linguaggio moderno dell’architettura: guida al codice anticlassico, Torino,
Einaudi, 1973.
ZEVI 1993 EBRAISMO
ID., Ebraismo e architettura, Firenze, Giuntina, 1993.
See also in BTA: LIQUID ARCHITECTURE