Military History Museum of the Bundeswehr
The Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr in Dresden is housed in the arsenal building of the Albertstadt, through which Daniel Libeskind's wedge-shaped extension cuts.
What it is
The museum is the museum of Germany's armed forces, with sites in Dresden, Berlin-Gatow and Königstein. In English it calls itself the Military History Museum of the Bundeswehr. The Dresden museum is at Olbrichtplatz 2.
The museum presents military history as part of a cultural history of violence, looking at the causes and effects of war. The permanent exhibition runs as a chronology from the late Middle Ages to the present in the old building, and as a themed tour inside the wedge.
History
The arsenal building belongs to the Albertstadt, the military district built north of the Neustadt from the 1870s. The Albertstadt was named after King Albert of Saxony, and the main arsenal building was completed in 1876/77.
The museum traces its collection back to the Saxon electors' armoury, founded in the city centre in 1559. The collection in the arsenal opened to the public in May 1897, and in 1914 it became the Royal Saxon Army Museum. After the First World War it was the Saxon Army Museum; under the Nazi regime it was placed under the army's museum authority and from 1942 called the Armeemuseum Dresden.
From 1946 the city's municipal collections used the building for several years as a hall for events, among them the Allgemeine Deutsche Kunstausstellung of autumn 1946. After refurbishment from 1965, it opened in March 1972 as the Armeemuseum der DDR (Army Museum of the GDR). In 1990 it was renamed Militärhistorisches Museum Dresden, and since 1994 it has been the lead museum of the Bundeswehr's museum and collection network.
The architect Daniel Libeskind designed the extension. The redesigned museum opened in 2011.
The wedge
The extension is a wedge that cuts through the front of the 19th-century arsenal building, which was kept. The tip of the wedge points towards the part of the city where the air raid of February 1945 began.
A viewing platform about 25 metres up in the wedge looks out over the city.