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Berlin (dpa) - The Humboldt Forum in Berlin first opened its gates digitally on Wednesday evening with a streamed tour.
General director Hartmut Dorgerloh welcomed the online visitors in the foyer of the new center for culture, art and science.
Dorgerloh asked the audience to stream the building with a light signal that symbolically started the cosmographer in the foyer - a gigantic media tower that functions like a digital advertising column.
After seven years of construction, the 677 million euro project behind the partially reconstructed baroque facade of the Berlin City Palace is to be opened in three stages by the end of 2021.
The approximately 40,000 square meter building designed by the Italian architect Franco Stella is located directly across from the world-famous Museum Island.
The Humboldt Forum will in future be used by two museums of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the State of Berlin and the Humboldt University.
Exhibits from Asia, Africa, America and Oceania as well as objects on the history of Berlin are to be shown.
There is a lot of discussion about the colonial past of some of the exhibits.
The reconstructed facade represents the time of the Hohenzollern, under whose rule the German Empire became a colonial power.
In what is now Namibia, uprisings by ethnic groups under German orders were brutally suppressed.
According to historians, around 65,000 of the 80,000 Herero and at least 10,000 of the 20,000 Nama were killed.
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Criticism was also triggered by the cross and dome with a widely visible biblical verse that called for the submission of all people to Christianity.
Subsequently, the Hohenzollern built the palace during the revolution in 1848, and the cross and dome marked the monarchy's claim to power.
Info openings
To the history of the place
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Architecture of the Humboldt Forum
City Museum for the Humboldt Forum
Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation for the Humboldt Forum
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Humboldt Laboratory in the Humboldt Forum
Interview Grütters