Notes from everyday: Spending a cold winter day at Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin

Berlin is an amazing city. The abundance of its cultural sights always allows to discover something new and get inspired by a variety of interesting and unexpected things around you.

Winter time. No desire of sitting at home, especially at the weekend? But it's still too cold for a day outdoors? Well, go to a historic museum. Let yourself wander around pieces of art, endless crowds of people and contemplate what was created and praised by the humankind in good old days.

Our choice for January was the Museum of German History on Unter den Linden.

The museum gives an overview of the German history from the early Middle Ages until the 20th century. It has a huge collection of paintings, statues, artifacts, literature and many other things collected not only on the territory of Germany, but from all over Europe. In the large rooms changing one another you can see what people did at different times - what they wore, what they read, what they had at home, what they were preoccupied and inspired with, what they created and eventually destroyed. Indeed, all the representations are limited to the history of German (Prussian) Empire, with some insights into its interaction with the French, British and Ottoman Empires.

Here are some pieces in the collection that drew my particular attention:

The four continents (Johann Joachim Kaendler, 1745/1746). Four feminine figures, equipped with scepters and other symbols of rule, embody the contine nts of Europe, Asia, Africa and America.

The crowned Europe sits on steed and is surrounded by objects of arts and science

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An oriental princess, sitting on a camel, represents Asia

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Africa is sitting on a lion

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America is pictured as a sparesely clothed Indinian woman on the back of a crocodile

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Legendary Encyclopédie edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. The 18th century creation of French Encyclopédistes who promoted the advancement of science and secular thought, and supported rationality and open-mindedness of the Enlightenment. Well, see Wikipedia for more detail..

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Discours de Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I was thrilled to see the collection of books from the Enlightment in the original.

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Hinged kitchen doll. The houshold's was and is still often considered the woman's domain. This hinged figure holds diverse kitchen utensils, thus with the female gender role literally imprinted on her body.