In honor of Zeitgeist Northwest’s upcoming German Culture Week (for details see http://www.zeitgeistnorthwest.org) I will introduce a number of German museums or other cultural icons this week. The Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin Mitte gets first dip.  Of the more than 170 (yes, you read that right) museums in the German capital it has some of the most interesting exhibits. The permanent exhibit is located in the old part, the Zeughaus. The museum’s special exhibits can be seen in the Exhibition Hall designed by the Chinese American architect I.M. Pei, a gorgeous piece of architecture. The traveling exhibits are devoted to formative historical events, epochs and social developments.

If you are lucky enough to travel to Berlin right now you can visit the current show https://www.dhm.de/en/ausstellungen/sticky-messages.html  (link is in English.) The exhibit displays anti-semitic and racist stickers from 1880 to the present making an effort to confront an ugly past as well as present-day dismal political agitation. The German title for this show is ingenious: Angezettelt   – the word consist of the preposition “an” (on) and the noun “Zettel” (note or small piece of paper) denoting the little stickers that you find affixed to public surfaces. The combined word, though, anzetteln, means instigation, or secret plotting or hatching of plans – a fitting description of the purpose of these ancestors of graffiti. It all gets, of course, lost in translation – sticky messages is the best any one could come up with.  More evidence, if still needed, for how unbelievably difficult good translation is.