BERLIN (dpa) – A row has broken out in Berlin over who actually owns the hundreds of Cold War artefacts housed in the famous “House at Checkpoint Charlie” museum, which every year attracts more than 600,000 visitors.
Rainer Hildebrandt, the ageing human rights activist, who created the museum on the Friedrich-Kochstrasse corner, close to where American and Soviet tanks stood threateningly barrel-to-barrel in 1961, maintains that most of the exhibits belong to him.
Several months ago the 13th of August (1961) “Wall” organisation he heads secured for four million marks (around l.95 million U.S. dollars) the rights to a collection of publications he has written about the communist-built wall over the past 35 years.
City representatives, however, argued that some artefacts found in the museum, which operates on several floors of large premises near the site of the former Checkpoint Charlie crossing point, have been purchased down the years with money donated by the Berlin State Lottery, and thus legally are the property of Berlin.
The dispute has become a public one in the past few days, with questions being raised over the precise status of the museum.
“I’m concerned whether Hildebrandt is still able to cope any more,” says Rainer E.Klemke, a Berlin cultural affairs official responsible for administrating city museums and memorials. “On my last visit to the museum he didn’t even recognise me.”
The museum no longer has a non-profit status, according to Alexandra Hildebrandt, the founder’s wife, and Hauke Jessen, another “13th of August” member.
This worries Rainer Epplemann, a German (CDU) deputy in the Bundestag, who is chairman of a foundation committed to addressing issues raised by Germany’s divided past.
With the museum chalking up annual profits of between two and three million marks (910,000 and l.35 million US dolls) annually in recent years, Epplemann says there is no way of ensuring that this money will be used “solely for the museum’s good,” if its non-profit status has gone.
In a letter sent Berlin’s governing mayor Klaus Wowereit, Epplemann has complained of “worrying developments” at Checkpoint Charlie which affect “the interests of the state of Berlin.”
In 1999, following public criticism of the way the wall organisation was conducting its financial affairs, its executive was beefed up from three to five members.
But since, critics have claimed that instead of ensuring the organisation was put on a new footing, with a foundation securing Hildebrandt’s work, its executive had instead announced at its last meeting that it was relinquishing its non-profit status.
Every day crowds of tourists are seen milling around the entrance to “House at Checkpoint Charlie” – which is Berlin’s most popular museum. Tens of thousands of people every year visit the museum, which is stacked with objects documenting the wall’s 28-year-old history.
They tour the various exhibition rooms, gasping at the ingenious methods used by people when escaping over or under the Wall in the Cold War era. Tunnels, pulleys, secret compartments in cars, balloons gliders and even a mini-sub were all used to outwit border guards down the years.
After the Wall’s demise in 1989, the museum soon became the only reliable place where visitors could obtain detailed information about it, and the victims it claimed down the years.
Aged 86, Rainer Hildebrandt still possesses a shock of wavy silver-grey hair. “But Health-wise I’m not too good now,” he was quoted as telling Der Morgenpost, the Berlin daily Tuesday. Alexandra, his young Ukraine-born wife, now attends to most business matters for him.
Throughout the history of the city barrier, Hildebrandt repeatedly drew attention to its cruelty, to the division of Germany, and to the fate of escapees.
Only once has his reputation been impaired. That was in 1986 when he announced at a Checkpoint Charlie press conference that a dramatic escape had occurred through a crossing point in a car full of Soviet officer “dummies.”
It later turned out that the driver of the car was a criminal who had been living in the west for several years. He was jailed later on embezzlement charges by the west Berlin authorities.
