Monbijou Palace - The Hollenzollern Museum

The Hollenzollern Museum

Around 1820 the so-called “Germanic-Slavic Antiquities” were removed from the royal curiosities cabinet (Kunstkammer) and housed in Monbijou Palace as the Museum for National Antiquities (Museum für Vaterländische Alterthümer). As the collections regularly expanded with the addition of new categories (paintings, jewelry, porcelain), the German emperor Wilhelm I finally made the palace with its 42 rooms accessible to the public as the “Hollenzollern Museum” in 1877. It was considered to be on the one hand an educational institution of cultural history, and on the other hand a place for the Hohenzollern dynasty to celebrate its own history and significance.

The museum survived the abolition of the monarchy in Germany in 1918. Its inventory remained in the possession of the dynasty but it was administered by the state, which made Monbijou Palace available for the purpose and assumed responsibility for maintaining the museum in the traditional way. World War II brought this state of affairs to an end. Large parts of the collections had been evacuated, and after the war were lotted and brought to the Soviet Union and other places. As late as 1940/41 Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler’s favored architect, proposed relocating the palace in order to make space for three new museum buildings across from the Museum Island—as part of the planning for the monumental Welthauptstadt Germania ("World Capital Germania") project. Monbijou castle was to be completely pulled down and rebuilt in the park of Charlottenburg Palace between the nearby Spree sluice and the Berlin Ringbahn. The war made these plans irrelevant.