The big state-run history museums have been criticised for showing too many Beeindruckungsdinge – objects that are visually impressive without conveying much information. Certainly the state museums own extraordinary collections of large objects: vehicles, weapons, sections of the Berlin Wall, and so on. Sometimes these are used rather lazily in the museum: Is a tank really informative, or just the conduit for a fascination with violence and technology? Here, however, is an object that impresses by being almost invisible.
A clear acrylic chair and a side-table sit within a clear acrylic wall. The plastic chair looks exactly like those on sale in designer furniture stores. Perhaps it had a GDR designer? But that doesn’t explain the elaborate clear plastic door behind it, with its clear plastic handle. That would be taking mid-century modern design too far.
An art installation, then? Possibly, since it sits opposite a section on subversive art in the GDR. In fact it is neither modern design nor artwork: it was one half of an un-buggable compartment used in the East German embassy in Vienna. The museum uses it here as a hook on which to hang an account of diplomatic discussions between East and West Germany which were held on neutral ground in Vienna.
The transparency of the objects embodies Cold War paranoia towards ‘hostile foreign countries’ (das feindliche Ausland). Today, the acrylic compartment would offer no protection from the interception of phone calls and emails by Germany’s ally America, which have been much in the news.
German History Museums 