East, West, unified Germany: one language, two developments in museological theory (original) (raw)

Germany gives the unique possibility to observe disciplinary developments at both sides of the Iron Curtain but based on the same history, argued in the same language. East Germany saw the consequences of a centralistic dictatorship: a state-controlled but vivid discourse on the fundamental principles and structures of museology, the foundation of central institutions and academic journals, a productive international exchange within the Eastern hemisphere. West Germany was definitely not interested in the development of the young discipline museology, although two ICOM conferences published ideas of a French and a Czechoslovakian museologist and a national ‘Institut für Museumskunde’ (‘institute for museology’) was founded. Theory building and terminology started either in transdisciplinary fields (e. g. visitor studies for different cultural institutions) or by solitary individuals with experiences in museum work and in researching and teaching at university. Independently but quite similarly, both German states developed a separate museology of history. The German unification did not lead to any synthesis but finished institutions, journals, and most individual working life of theoreticians with GDR origin: a sharp cut of all results of efforts in East Germany except for the ‘Fachschule für Museologen’ (‘college of museologists’). Continuity can be seen in the long-time discourse on the meaning of things—starting already in 1940—and in the dominance of the former Western system of individual, free-choice efforts and transdisciplinary inputs without any academic institutionalisation.