at FriedrichstrasseOn 28 May 1695, the Elector Friedrich III of Brandenburg, gave the orders to lay the foundation stone of the Berlin “Zeughaus”, the Arsenal. The first architect was Johann Arnold Nering. He was followed by Martin Grünberg and then, from 1698 to 1699, by Andreas Schlüter. The building was given its final exterior form by Jean de Botd in 1706. But it wasn’t until 1730 that the construction was finally completed.
The Zeughaus is the oldest building located on the avenue Unter den Linden. It is one of most beautiful secular buildings of the Baroque period in northern Germany and owes its special place in art history to the high quality of its sculptural works.
In 1939 Adolf Hitler gave orders to have the army museums in Berlin, Munich and Dresden taken over by the Wehrmacht. From this time on the spirit of German heroism, such as the National Socialists understood it, was propagated in the Zeughaus. Parades and commemorations in the open courtyard were part of the German war propaganda until 1944. In 1944/45 the building was severely damaged by bombs and grenades. In 1945 the Allied Military Command of the city closed down the “War Museum Zeughaus”. The reconstruction of the building went on from 1948 to 1965. From 1952 to 1990 the “Museum for German History”, founded by the Central Committee of the SED (Socialist Unity Party), was located in the Zeughaus. The aim of the museum was to convey the Marxist-Leninist concept of history. As the central museum of history in the German Democratic Republic it undertook extensive activities to collect and display historical material. In September 1990 the museum was dissolved by the last government of the GDR. Its collections and properties, including the Zeughaus, were transferred into the hands of the German Historical Museum, founded three years earlier by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Land Berlin.
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