Once again we look around at the two-master Maria and the tugboat Enzo behind her, both surrounded by skin-wing frames from the early days of aviation.

Before that, we had walked through the large hall behind the previous entrance area of ​​the Deutsches Museum for the last time, where ship models from the trireme to the supertanker retell the conquest of the seas by technology, including many gray battlecruisers in the basement.

Ulf von Rauchhaupt

Editor in the “Science” section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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But over.

The shipping hall has been closed since June 29th, as has the power machines with their smell of steel and lubricating oil.

The day before, lightning flashed over the visitors to the high-voltage demonstration for the last time.

The mine in the belly of the Isar island will also no longer be accessible until at least 2027.

The entire northern part of the museum is being renovated.

This has already happened to the southern one.

Some of the exhibitions located there, including printing technology, chemistry, agricultural engineering and musical instruments, were closed years ago.

They will reopen today, July 7th.

And the curators have done everything to bring their house there up to date, not only in terms of fire protection.

Elements of a presentation concept

This has already been achieved in the new entrance area.

The new way from the south into the temple of technology looks light and airy.

It's almost a pity that this entree is only temporary.

"We're doing open-heart surgery here," says Helmuth Trischler, the research director of the Deutsches Museum.

But the building, inaugurated in 1925 - eighty percent destroyed in the war, reopened in 1948 and, due to its location in the middle of the river, threatened by water seeping into the cellar magazines - had to be completely overhauled.

Six hundred and sixty million euros from federal and state coffers were made available for this, as well as fifty million donations and another forty million from the regular budget, Trischler confirms and hopes that this will be enough in view of the currently sharply rising costs for construction projects.

“Of course we could have fixed it all at once.

But then we would probably have been completely closed for ten years.” For the main building of the most visited museum in Germany and one of the most important attractions in Munich, that was not an option.

By starting with the southern half and leaving sections such as shipping or the mine untouched for the time being, it was certainly easier to tackle the other major renovation task: making the exhibition fit for the 21st century in terms of content and presentation.

It is true that many of the permanent exhibitions have been completely renewed again and again, especially where it was important to stay up to date with science.

But here and there elements of a presentation concept stubbornly persisted, as could be seen in the ship hall until last week.

Even with the musical instruments.

"Our old exhibition comprised 750 objects that were sorted systematically," says curator Silke Berdux.

With the result that the visitors stood in front of a display case with twenty oboes, which showed them a development

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"Now we have a completely new concept," says Berdux.

"We selected highlights from the two thousand instruments in our collection and defined twelve themes around these." One shows instruments such as a violin integrated into a walking stick or an orphica, a portable fortepiano.

They date from around 1800, when work and leisure were separated and people went out into nature to make music there.

Another topic is the advent of electric musical instruments, which the Deutsches Museum bought right away and now has one of the most important collections from the early days of electric instruments.

Other gems were added for the new exhibition, including the first Moog synthesizer to come to Germany.