The story
The baroque Zeughaus on Unter den Linden was begun in 1695 as the Prussian arsenal, and its inner courtyard is ringed with carved heads of dying warriors by the sculptor Andreas Schlüter. Since 1990 it has housed the Deutsches Historisches Museum, a national museum of German history. The museum was founded in West Berlin in 1987, and after reunification it took over the arsenal, which had held East Germany's own museum of German history.
It is primarily a history museum, and its paintings are kept as historical evidence. Albert Bettannier's The Black Stain, from 1887, shows a French classroom where a teacher points at a map on which Alsace and part of Lorraine, lost to Germany in 1871, are coloured black. A portrait of Emperor Charles V as commander, given to Peter Paul Rubens and his workshop, follows a portrait by Titian and records how the Habsburg emperor wished to be seen.
The Zeughaus closed in 2021 for renovation, and the museum does not expect to reopen it before about 2031. Visitors now enter the exhibition hall of glass and stone added behind it by the architect I. M. Pei and opened in 2003, where changing exhibitions draw on a collection of around a million objects.
