Weeks after the full opening of Berlin’s contentious Humboldt Forum, a new row has hit the ethnological museum complex housed in a replica of the old Kaiser palace.
After fights over its Prussian restoration architecture and its exhibits’ colonial providence, the latest row concerns Christian details added to the building’s prominent dome.
Topped by a crucifix, the dome carries around its circumference, in golden letters, a Bible quote: “Under heaven, no other name is given but that of Jesus, before whom every knee will bow.”
Federal culture minister Claudia Roth of the Green Party says the inscription “is perceived as a claim of a dominant culture”.
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On Wednesday she presented plans for a light installation to obscure the inscription with “reflective texts” she says will be more in keeping with the multicultural nature of the museum complex beneath.
“The inscription will be preserved, it will only be made clear that the Humboldt Forum is critical of this statement,” she said.
Permanent plaques
Ms Roth said the intervention would address a “politically and religiously interpretable restoration of the monarchical and Christian symbolism on the building”, which was built at a cost of €700 million with largely public money.
As well as temporary projections permanent plaques will be erected explaining the dome and its inscription.
Among the critics of the dome’s Christian touches is Berlin-based curator Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung. Originally from Cameroon, he argues that “the extreme violence of Christianity during colonisation cannot be forgotten”.
Erecting Christian symbols at the museum’s highest and most public spot, he told Deutschlandfunk radio, was an “incredible display of superiority”.
Plans to alter the inscription have come under fire from Germany’s opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which accuses Ms Roth of leading a culture war against Germany’s Christian heritage.
They have consulted with Prussian historians and theologians, who say the proposals ignore the context of the inscription twice over.
After the Germans’ failed 1848 revolution against their autocratic monarch, Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV added the crucifix and inscription in thanks to God.
“The king felt he must give an account of his actions and actions before God, that is the meaning of this quote,” said Dr Richard Schröder, a Berlin-based theologian. “Now it’s being made out that the king apparently somehow wants to force people to bend their knees ... to Christianity.”
Berlin’s Catholic archbishop Heiner Koch says the quote, in part from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, does not reflect any ideas of religious superiority. Instead, it expresses a Christian belief that “people should only bow before God and not give that honour to any earthly power”.
Even the Bild tabloid has rowed into the debate, arguing: “Christianity is being pushed back. That is sanctimonious and unfair.”
Wilhelm von Boddien, whose lobbying and fundraising kickstarted the palace reconstruction, criticised the inscription plan as a “cultural rupture” with Germany’s Christian roots.
The row has sparked heated debate online. One of Ms Roth’s Twitter followers suggested she replace the Bible quote with a line from philosopher Immanuel Kant: “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-inflicted immaturity.”
