Millennium of Russian-German relations at an exhibition in Berlin

From beeswax and birch bark to trophies and gas pipelines, the exhibition in Berlin shows a long, colorful and sometimes tragic history of relations between Germany and Russia, the two most populous countries in Europe.

Photo: Garеth Jones

The exhibition “Russians and Germans” (Russians and Germans) in the New Museum (Neues Museum) focuses on cultural and commercial contacts between the two peoples, rooted in the distant X century. “The purpose of the exhibition is to emphasize the continuity of intensive relations in the fields of politics, economics and culture,” said Steffen Zarutzki, a worker at the Berlin Museum. The exposition attracted a lot of public attention, about a quarter of all visitors are Russian speakers.

The exhibition, which has already managed to become one of the most significant events of the outgoing Year of Germany in Russia and the parallel Year of Russia in Germany, was organized with the assistance of Germany’s largest energy group E.ON.

The exposition includes about 600 works of art, including paintings, books, costumes and weapons. The chronological framework covers the period from the first campaigns of the medieval merchants of the Hanseatic League to the period of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from German soil.

In one of the first pavilions you can see large wooden panels of the XIV century, which depict bearded Rusich, in high hats and dressing gowns, collecting beeswax, hunting for squirrels and sables, and then selling their goods to German merchants.

The Germans paid for furs, wax, wood and grain with wine, metals and luxury goods. Such an exchange is not so different from trade flows today, when they buy natural resources, oil and gas from Russia, and sell German cars and consumer goods.

Primitive dictionaries with word tables show the first attempts of German merchants to learn Russian. The explanatory brochure for the exhibition tells the story of the origin of the word "German" in Russian. "Nemtsy" comes from the word "dumb", which indicates a misunderstanding between the ancient Slavs and guests from the West.

Today, Russians and Germans understand each other much easier. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up during the Soviet era in East Germany, speaks good Russian, while Russian President Vladimir Putin, who worked in the 1980s as a KGB agent in East Germany, speaks fluent German.

“The Russian soul and the German mind are clearly closer to each other than is sometimes stated,” said Joachim Gauck, former president of Germany, former pastor from communist East Berlin at the opening of the exhibition “Russians and Germans”. “In the common history of Russia and Germany, the horrors of the past should not be decisive,” he continued.