The Pergamonmuseum is completely closed due to construction work. Pergamonmuseum. Das Panorama remains open. Tickets
Whether scientifically, politically, economically, culturally or socially, it has become evident that connections have existed for centuries between Europe and those parts of the world influenced by Islam. With the educational project Shared Past – Shared Future II (GeZu II), the Museum für Islamische Kunst seeks to foster an awareness of these diverse, historically evolved transcultural interconnections and to make them tangible. The project also aims to recognise and take advantage of the opportunities offered by an increasingly pluralistic society.
GeZu II expands on the museum’s predecessor model project GeZu I, begun in 2017, to offer diverse transcultural educational resources for schools, youth centers, mosque communities and educational media providers. The project is supported by the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) and funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM).
As a teacher would you like to convey a more diverse image of cultures influenced by Islam to your pupils? On the online portal Islamic Art, you can find a wide range of teaching materials conforming to German school curricula in the e-learning section („Digitales Lernen“). These materials are suitable for school lessons across Germany in the subjects of art, music, ethics / religion, history and politics.
The teaching materials are currently only available in German.
Overview of German-language teaching modules
What would have become of Elvis Presley or Jimi Hendrix without the invention of the Arabic lute called the oud? What do flowers, animals and patterns symbolise in oriental carpets? And how can museum exhibits be brought to life using film? In digital and analogue workshops, school classes and teachers can explore these and many other questions. All workshops can currently only be booked in German.
Overview of German-language workshops and teacher training courses
Digital workshops
Analogue workshops
Teacher training courses
Would you like to learn about new teaching methods for school lessons? Would you like to gain insights into digital tools? The Museum für Islamische Kunst offers the following German-language training courses for teachers free of charge:
Are images forbidden in Islam? How can discussions about subjects to do with Islam be illustrated in a way that is sensitive to diversity? May pictures of the Prophet Mohammed be printed in educational media and textbooks? These and many other questions are addressed in workshops, web talk series, short videos and handouts that the Museum für Islamische Kunst has developed in cooperation with the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media |Georg-Eckert-Institute (GEI). These materials are aimed at editors of educational media and educators. These offers and accompanying professional expertise aim to facilitate a diversity-oriented and professionally sound presentation of topics related to Islam in educational media and the classroom. These materials are currently only available in German.
Overview of German-language handouts
Overview of German-language video lectures
Webtalk-Reihe für Pädagog*innen in Kooperation mit Infodienst Radikalisierungsprävention / bpb, der Bildungsstätte Anne Frank, Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsmedien | Georg-Eckert-Institut und ufuq.de:
Webtalk-Reihe für Redakteur*innen von Bildungsmedien und Schulbüchern in Kooperation mit dem Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsmedien | Georg-Eckert-Institut
More than 2.7 million people of Turkish origin live in Germany. For those who immigrated as the first generation of “guest workers”, it was particularly hard to develop a new sense of home in the foreignness of Germany. Public awareness often focuses on assembly line work and the economic dimension of “guest work”. Yet culturally and musically, Turkish immigrants of the early days in the Federal Republic of Germany created a cultural heritage that the German population hardly noticed. In the Online Stories, Turkish-German music history from the 1960s to the 2000s comes alive visually and audibly. The short film Sounds from the Soul – Music between Almanya and Germany by director Mirza Odabaşı portrays important voices from this music history.
In the Stories, people of Turkish origin from different generations talk about their memories, longings and relationship to music.
The special exhibition Gurbet Şarkıları – Songs from Foreign Lands. Music and Belonging between Turkey and Germany (1961–2021) marking the 60th anniversary of the recruitment agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Turkey was presented in the Museum für Islamische Kunst in the Pergamonmuseum from 12 November 2021 to 20 February 2022. The exhibition focused on the relationship between music practices, individual biographies and social affiliation and showed the cultural achievements and differing perspectives of the first, second and third generations of “guest workers”.
Overview of the Stories
Acquiring knowledge through play: The historical adventure game offers exciting riddles in the style of escape games for young people aged 15 and over as well as adults. On the search for a cure for the ailing Emir of Granada, players discover the world of medical knowledge in southern Europe, western and northern Africa, and western and central Asia in the 14th century. As an educator at a school or extracurricular place of learning, you receive REMEDIO free of charge (as long as available). The game is only available in German.
The topic of migration is often seen negatively and associated with deficits. With the interactive Toolbox, people can learn, for example, that their perspective is one of many and can be broadened with the help of a critical but appreciative culture of discussion. The Toolbox is suitable for moderated discussion sessions in German at youth centers and schools. It was developed in cooperation with the Multaka project. Adolescents and young adults participated in all phases of the Toolbox project, contributing their ideas to its development and testing in practice.
The Toolbox stands for the vision of a shared future for all of society: It motivates an appreciative togetherness. To ensure the success of a lively and yet thoughtful exchange, young people (12 years and older / 7th grade) are assisted by Multaka guides. The Multaka (Arabic for “meeting point”) project has been training people from the Middle East with refugee and/or migration experience to become museum guides since 2015.
Interactive games and exercises relating to the everyday topics of food, places and music facilitate access to the topics of migration, mobilty and transculturality, as well as exclusion and inclusion.
The Toolbox is aimed at schools and youth facilities in Berlin, and is carried out on site by Multaka guides free of charge. The Toolbox materials are only available in German. Dates for the 90-minute events are available on request:
Can an object unite people? Which influences are reflected in the shape and design of various objects? The TAMAM educational materials, which can be downloaded free of charge, encourage inquiry and invite people to rediscover things they have come to take for granted. TAMAM is a project undertaken by Muslims from various mosque communities to enable more cultural education in mosques. Beyond its focus on mosque education, the project is also aimed at building bridges and making religious diversity tangible. The materials can thus also be used by anyone interested in exploring cultural identities with young people at schools or extracurricular facilities. The educational project was accompanied for three years by the Institute of Islamic Theology at Osnabrück University.
With project days for pupils and seminars for teachers, educators and disseminators, Haus Bastian and the Museumsinsel collections regularly become fields of experimentation through the pilot project Political Education in Museums. Information is available here on German-language events for pupils.
Would you like to bring cultural and civic education closer together? Are you interested in methodological issues? Take a look at the agenda that the working group „Culture, Politics and Education“ has compiled for practioners (available from April 2023). The agenda is currently only available in German.
Would you like to inform yourself about current exhibitions and educational programmes offered by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin or about new events? Information is available here on events and trainings for educators (primarily in German).
Overview of teaching materials and agenda in German
What sources enhanced European knowledge about the human body? How did Ottoman mosque architecture reach German cities? And since when have peppers actually lived in Germany? By means of stories in various media, the project makes visible that diversity and migration have always shaped the history of art and culture and are essential motors for innovation. The project brings such “migration stories“ to life in exhibitions, workshops, teaching materials, in the game REMEDIO, the “Shared Future“ Toolbox and on the online portal “Islamic·Art“. The aim of these stories is to irritate the one-sided and stereotypical perception of migration in socio-political discourse and to show that the stories from the Museum of Islamic Art are part of the cultural histories of Germany and Europe.
Listen to the Mschatta Lounge concert series from 2019, which offered a broad audience of music enthusiasts the chance to experience music and artworks as an expression of global interconnections. The resulting soundtracks and interviews with the musicians are available in the media library on the online portal Islamic Art.
Overview of soundtracks and interviews
Project managers: Miriam Kurz and Stefan Weber
Project Staff: Kathrin Allmann (educational media), Franziska Becker (workshops, storytelling), Laura Beusmann (storytelling, teaching materials, educational media; assistant director), Franziska Bloch (context curator), Anja Deller (project administration, contract allocation, finances), Zinaida Ebden (social media, press, events), Dr. Deniz Erduman-Calış (Songs from Foreign Lands, educational media), Christopher Förch (civic education, Haus Bastian), Dr. Sarah Fortmann-Hijazi (Toolbox), Lars Hecker (visitor services, HBA), Maximilian Heiden (Online portal, IT), Salma Jreige (Toolbox), Annette Rohde (Third Party Funding Department), Dr. Leonard Schmieding (civic education, Haus Bastian), Hilal Sezgin-Just (Songs from Foreign Lands, REMEDIO, Toolbox, storytelling), Dr. Margaret Shortle (context curator), Roman Singendonk (TAMAM project, educational media), Cornelia Weber (Online portal, PR)
Supported by: Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz
Funding: Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media
Duration: November 2018 – April 2023