Description [EN]
In the middle of Berlin-Mitte, at Linienstraße 154a, the Museum der Stille offers a deliberately withdrawn place for contemplation and quiet. It is located on the ground floor of a grey Gründerzeit building; a commemorative plaque on the façade recalls the resistance fighter Margarete Kaufmann. The interiors are sparsely furnished: windows facing the street are curtained, deep red walls and grey-black carpeting create muted acoustics, and seating in front of the paintings invites visitors to linger.
The museum was initiated in 1994 by the Russian painter Nikolai Georgijewitsch Makarow to create a point of calm in the metropolis. The starting point of the collection consists of two large-scale grisaille paintings by Makarow, which depict landscapes and clouds in a translucent, misty manner. After an extensive renovation that began in 1999 and was completed in 2001, the house remained closed from 2009 to 2014 due to noise complaints originating in the same building; it reopened in 2014 for the twentieth-anniversary celebration.
As part of this reorientation, architects were invited to develop designs for so-called "buildings of silence." Today a series of seven utopian architectural models complements the paintings; they were created by Stephan Braunfels, Max Dudler, Staab Architekten, Franco Stella, Gewers & Pudewill, Michael Marshall and Sergei Tchoban. The museum presents itself as a non-denominational space for mental and physical relaxation and aims to make silence sensually tangible; one supporter described it as a "secularized space of devotion."
The operators are the non-profit Sergej-Mawrizki-Stiftung and the association Freunde des Stillen Museums e. V., founded in 2014. Prospectively, collaborations with museums and public institutions at home and abroad, as well as the temporary installation of individual models at full scale at their respective locations, are envisaged.