Berlin's Jewish Museum: A Personal Tour with Daniel Libeskind (2001)

This extraordinary haunting building, a zig-zag form reflecting an invisible matrix of addresses of Jewish Berliners who once lived in the area, is Daniel Libeskind's first commission. It took ten years to build, and it has become an integral part of the cityscape, attracting vast numbers of visitors and signaling a new era of Jewish-German history. Libeskind is questioned by Alan Riding, New York Times journalist, as he takes him through the building, which was initially intended as a simple annex to the adjacent baroque Berlin Museum. His concept for the new wing, though, was intentionally so incompatible with the main building that there was no way to connect them above ground. To arrive in the Jewish Museum, visitors must enter through the 18th-century building and then descend to underground passageways and "voids," which in themselves give a strong sense of the tragic fate of the German-Jewish population during the Hitler years, even without any exhibitions in place. During this walking tour, Libeskind lays bare to Riding the entire architectural and philosophical concept of the building, an absolutely unique construct of innovation, intellectual prowess, and direct allusions to the lives and work of Berlin's pre-Nazi population of Jewish literati and artists, such as Walter Benjamin and Arnold Schonberg.