Blown Away

Spread over 1,300 square metres and including some 300 objects, the exhibition Blown Away: The Palace of the Republic examines the past and present of the Palace. Many of these objects can be seen again for the first time since the building closed. Visitors can discover objects from and relating to the Palace, designs, models, posters and photographs, and audio and video interviews from the project “Memory Work at the Humboldt Forum”, as well as interactive offerings.

The exhibition focuses on the building’s various phases, from its planning and construction (1973–76), its use as a multipurpose political and cultural building in the GDR, and its significance as the home of the first freely elected People’s Chamber to its interim usage as a cultural venue and its demolition by the German federal government, a process that was completed in 2008. Numerous artworks and furnishings from the Palace of the Republic enable visitors to visualize the ways in which the building was used, including fragments from the Glass Flower and Willi Sitte’s painting Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag). At the centre of the exhibition are excerpts from around fifty interviews presenting the viewpoints of people who worked in the Palace, visited it, or deliberately sought to avoid it: we listen to prominent figures as well as people whose voices have previously gone unheard.