After the Berlin wall was razed 20 years ago, Professor Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, the president of the Goethe-Institute, helped reunite important collections from East and West Germany for the Museumsinsel, an island on river Spree where five museums were heavily damaged during World War II.

Since 1998, as the head of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, he helped design and restore the museums and spoke about it in the Capital on Monday. Lehmann is here to participate in the festivities of Max Mueller Bhavan’s 50th anniversary celebrations.

At the Max Mueller Bhavan, known the world over as Goethe-Institut, he presented a 3D simulation: “A New Chance for Germany — the Museumsinsel in Berlin and the Reunification”.

To him, the restoration was associated with his own past. As a child, he would often cross over to the other side to meet his grandfather and uncles who lived in East Germany. His parents lived on the other side of the wall that stood in the way of the family. His parents were forbidden to travel and so he went alone, spending vacations, bringing back hugs and letters and messages and memories.

Incidentally, the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 50th anniversary of the Max Mueller Bhavan in India fell in the same week. And Lehmann didn’t miss the opportunity to talk about the structure that had stood in the way of Max Mueller Bhavan. It paved the way for the institute to reach out to other countries behind the Iron Curtain like Russia, he said.

... contd.