Berlin museum re-creates Hitler’s suicide bunker
Visitors to Berlin can for the first time view a recreation of the bunker room where Adolf Hitler committed suicide, but the exhibit has been denounced by a rival museum.
A replica of the office where the dictator and his wife, Eva Braun, killed themselves at the end of World War II will be on display behind a glass screen to deter neo-Nazis from taking selfies at the exhibition, which opens today.
The room, containing a replica of the sofa where the bodies of the Fuhrer and his longstanding companion died on April 30, 1945, has been reconstructed at the privately run Berlin Story Bunker museum.
The city authorities refused funding, while the nearby statefunded Topography of Terror museum, built on the site of the former Gestapo headquarters, called the exhibit a ‘‘Disneyland’’ approach to Berlin’s past.
‘‘We explain history, present documents and stick to the facts. Therefore we could not support such stage-production,’’ a spokesman for Topography of Terror said.
The Hitler exhibit is housed in one of Berlin’s three remaining air-raid bunkers built in 1942 in the Kreuzberg district. It has housed other exhibitions telling the story of the city since it became a museum nearly 20 years ago.
Such is the sensitivity surrounding the exploitation of Hitler to attract tourists that only now have the owners dared to create a replica of his bunker office along with a scale model of the entire Fuhrerbunker complex.
To combat charges of sensationalism, the Berlin Story Bunker will insist that all visitors follow a 90-minute guided tour learning about German history before reaching the Hitler room.
‘‘We do not want to make a Hitler show here,’’ Wieland Giebel, director of the Berlin Story Bunker, said. ‘‘There are only guided tours. Nobody comes in by himself. We do not want to have Hitler tourism, we want to show the end of World War II and what it means if national socialism controls society.
‘‘We are not Madame Tussauds, you will not see Hitler sitting here. Of course this is a very sensitive theme and this is why we are so strict because we do not want it to be said we are doing anything strange here.’’
Nothing remains above ground of the original Fuhrerbunker site where a car park and a block of flats were built, although some underground rooms and passages were buried rather than dismantled. Asked why it had taken 71 years for Hitler’s bunker office to be recreated, Giebel replied: ‘‘Why now? Because the distance is big enough now.’’-