From 1740 to 1797, Schloss Schönhausen served as the summer residence of Elisabeth Christine, the Prussian queen and wife of Frederick the Great. The opulent interior designs from the late 17th and 18th centuries have been preserved to this day. The richly stuccoed ballroom on the first floor remains the only originally preserved late Rococo interior in Berlin.
Our USO handsets are used in the permanent exhibition “Art – People – Power: Schloss Schönhausen as a Site of the Nazi Campaign Against ‘Degenerate Art'”. They help convey the castle’s role as a central location of Nazi cultural policy. This is where thousands of artworks, confiscated and labeled as “degenerate” (“entartet”) by the Nazis, were stored before being sold abroad.
The expanded exhibition provides deep insights into the cultural policy of National Socialism and presents Schloss Schönhausen as one of the central locations of this era. Selected original artworks and the reconstruction of their paths to the present day illustrate the multifaceted aspects of the “Degenerate Art” campaign and its long-term consequences.
Copyright: SPSG / Leo Seidel, SPSG / Katja Hauplorenz
