A new Frankfurt museum may not be a Berlin airport, but parallels come to mind: just as there were many opening dates and even more postponements in the capital before a plane from “BER” finally took off, it also took a long time for the Museum of Modern Electronic Music, MOMEM for short, was opened on Wednesday evening with a ceremony in the Paulskirche and a party at the Hauptwache.

Almost exactly seven years have passed since the project was presented to the public at Musikmesse 2015.

All sorts of unanswered questions, quarrels and last but not least Corona prevented the rapid realization of the plan to erect a memorial to electronic music, which had put Frankfurt on the pop music map for a few years in the form of Techno.

Christian Riethmuller

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Because the MOMEM should not be a museum that you visit maybe once or twice a year, according to the makers around director Alex Azary.

The exhibition house, housed in the former rooms of the children's museum, wants to function as a kind of club and not only look back on a music movement with workshops, discussion events or film evenings, but also reflect the current developments in electronic music.

And the museum should be a cultural meeting point in downtown Frankfurt, emphasized Ina Hartwig (SPD), head of the cultural department, in her speech in the Paulskirche.

"The MOMEM should convey cultural contexts in a new and attractive way," she hopes.

Alex Azary is certain that the new museum has this potential: "It revitalizes our city with a universally understandable and binding cultural sector: music," he said in his speech, in which he also expressly thanked Mayor Peter Feldmann (SPD) for his commitment thanked for the realization of the museum.

The Frankfurt mayor, patron of the museum, was also present in the Paulskirche, but did not speak there.

After the charges against him in connection with the AWO affair, Feldmann stated that

to “use a sense of proportion” at public appointments.

However, the mayor later stepped onto the stage at the party at the main station to say a few words to the many visitors - around 3,000 according to the police.

However, the cheering of the revelers belonged to the star of the evening, DJ Sven Väth, who was born in Offenbach, grew up in Obertshausen and became famous in Frankfurt . 

Under the title "It's simple to tell what saved us from hell", the first exhibition at the MOMEM is dedicated to Sven Väth, who was definitely a bridge builder between the golden days of Frankfurt in the 1990s and the electronic music now, which is more common in cities like Berlin plays, acts.

The show, conceived by the artist and Städelschule professor Tobias Rehberger and curated by Torben Giese (StadtPalais Stuttgart), shows works of art by Banksy, Rehberger and Andreas Gursky, for example, as well as a selection from Väth’s enormous private record collection and numerous photos from all phases of the DJ’s life.

A special attraction of the exhibition is "Spot", an extremely agile four-legged robot or rather a drone on four legs, which the South Korean company Hyundai made dance at the opening.

The carmaker wants to support the museum as a sponsor, he announced on Wednesday.