ROADS NOT TAKEN. OR: IT COULD HAVE TURNED OUT DIFFERENTLY. An exhibition of the German Historical Museum in cooperation with the Alfred Landecker Foundation.
Based on key dates in German history, the German Historical Museum presents a retrospective of decisive historical events of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the exhibition, events that actually took place are juxtaposed with possible courses of events that did not occur for very different reasons.
On the basis of 14 striking incisions in German history, the probabilities of failed history - prevented by coincidences, averted by misfires or inadequacies of another kind - are shown.
The exhibition begins in 1989 with the Peaceful Revolution in the GDR and ends in 1848, when Germany first dared to embark on a democratic awakening. In reverse order, it takes up topics such as Ostpolitik, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War, the takeover of power by the National Socialists, or revolution and democratization at decisive tipping points and explains that it by no means had to come as it finally did. In this way, landmarks such as the Stalin Notes of 1952, the Korean War of 1950, the Berlin Airlift of 1948/49, the assassination of Adolf Hitler in 1944, the occupation of the Rhineland in 1936, the transfer of power to Hitler in 1933, the overthrow of Chancellor Brüning in 1932, the Revolution of 1918, the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 or the German War of 1866 appear in a new light.
This perspective, unusual for a history museum, should make it possible to sharpen one's view of known facts and of the fundamental openness of history.
