Hamburger Bahnhof: Berlin’s National Gallery of Contemporary Art
This is part of a continuing series of photographs from a 21-day, three country, five city winter vacation to Europe with my ladyfriend (and fellow photographer) Serena. Our stops? Berlin, Rome, Naples, Bath & London
In this post, we remain in Berlin to take a peek inside the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, one of the largest and most significant public collections of contemporary art in the world.
Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart
The Hamburger Bahnhof is one of Berlin’s major 19th-century terminus stations – a site of arrival, departure, and transition. The station was built to architect and railway pioneer Friedrich Neuhaus’s plans in 1846/47 as the starting point of the Berlin–Hamburg Railway. It is the only surviving terminus building in Berlin from the late neoclassical period and one of the oldest station buildings in Germany.
“Nude (Self-Portrait)” (1996) by Turkish painter and opera singer Semiha Berksoy (1910–2004)
In the mid-1980s the Berlin entrepreneur Erich Marx offered his private collection of contemporary art to the city. The Berlin Senate decided in 1987 to establish a museum of contemporary art in the former railway station. A competition for the renovation of the station was announced by the Senate in 1989, and was won by the architect Josef Paul Kleihues. His design set an architectural precedent for the subsequent designs of Berlin’s train stations through the second half of the 19th century.
Between 1990 and 1996, Kleihues refurbished the building, and in November 1996 the 108,000 sq ft museum was opened with an exhibition of works by German painter and photographer Sigmar Polke. In 2004, another part of the building complex, the former Güterbahnhof, which is connected to the Hamburger Bahnhof, was rebuilt as an exhibition hall, the Rieckhallen.
Gateway from Hamburger Bahnhof to Rieckhallen
In 2004, another part of the building complex, the former Güterbahnhof, which is connected to the Hamburger Bahnhof, was rebuilt as an exhibition hall, the Rieckhallen, for the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection – a modern art collection founded by Friedrich Christian Flick (grandson of wealthy Nazi sympathizer and supporter Friedrich Flick, who was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Nuremberg trials).
The Hamburger Bahnhof is open from Tuesday-Sunday from 10am-6pm (8pm on Thursday) and will set you back €16,00. Enjoy the Gallery…
Stay tuned for our next post, which offers a look inside the historic Berlin Cathedral.
Then we’ll move on to our next city – Rome.
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