Page 470 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

1110 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

The master-narrative of the Great Patriotic War in the
‘Museum of Capitulation’ in Berlin-Karlshorst

Anne HASSElmANN

he following article presents an analysis of a former soviet exhibition called the
T „Muzej istorii bezogorovočnoj kapituljacii fašistskoj Germanii v vojne 1941-1945
gg“ (Historical Museum of the Unconditional Capitulation of Fascist Germany in the
1
War 1941-1945) in Berlin-Karlshorst, that was on show from 1967 till 1994. 2
Firstly, we need to understand, why a soviet war museum was established in
Karlshorst, a mansion area in the outskirts of Berlin. To understand the choice of this
location I start with presenting the history of the museum which is today called „German-
Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst“. Following this introduction I will draw on the latest
historical research concerning and relationg to this topic. Before analyzing the Soviet
exhibition, I would like to focus on the official commemoration in the Soviet Union and
the German Democratic Republic (GDR) on what they call the „Great Patriotic War“.
The centerpiece of my paper will be the analysis of the former exhibition in Berlin-
Karlshorst. Following this a guided tour the briefly called „Museum of Capitulation“
3
will be reconstructed to show how the socialist master-narrative of the Great Patriotic
War was visualised in the exhibition. Finally I will describe the typical visitors and sum
it all up with my conclusions.

The history of the German-Russian Museum
The present German-Russian Museum used to be a German Engineer School of the
Wehrmacht. In the battle of Berlin at the end of April 1945 it was usedby the Soviet
Army as its headquarters. After the German capitulation was first signed on the 7th
of May in Rheims it was ratified in Karlshorst in the evening of the 8th to 9th of May
1945 (Photo no. 1). From 1945 to 1949 the building used to be the main office of the
Soviet Military Administration. On the 10th of October 1949 General Vasily Chuikov
granted legal state authority to the first government of the GDR. From 1967 to 1994
the military council of the political section of the Soviet Armed Forces established the

1 English translations in parentheses by the author of this paper.
2 This article is based on my Masterthesis: „Die Meistererzählung vom Großen Vaterländische Krieg in
Berlin-Karlshorst“, April 2013, University of Zurich (not published).
The sofar only research concering the „Museum of Capitulation“ is: Camphausen, Gabriele: Das sowjetische
Museum der bedingungslosen Kapitulation, in: Museum Berlin- Karlshorst e.V. (Hg.): Museum Berlin-Kar-
lshorst, Erinnerung an einen Krieg, Berlin 1997, S. 48-53.
3 The term „Master-narrative“ is understood as follows: A master narrative is a trans-historical narrative
that is usually embedded in a particular culture. It includes organised stories that share common rhetori-
cal desire to solve a conflict through the establishment of audience expectations according to the known
trajectories.