This page provides an overview of the tours and lectures arranged by the Berlin Historical Association in 2025.
12 December 2025 - BHA's 30th annual Christmas Dinner.
15 November 2025 - Spandau Citadel and exhibitions.
The Spandau Zitadelle is one of Europe's best-preserved Renaissance fortresses, built between 1560-1594 as Berlin's western defence. Italian architects created this masterpiece with four bastions surrounded by water, featuring ingenious ramparts and underground galleries designed to detect and target attackers from every angle. The tour will also include a guided overview of two fascinating exhibitions housed within the historic fortress walls. The “UNVEILED” exhibition showcases monuments removed from Berlin's streets during political upheavals from 1849-1986, including pieces from the German Empire, Nazi era, and GDR - with the unique opportunity to actually touch most exhibits. The new “SPANDAU PRISON 1877-1987” exhibition tells the complete story of the infamous prison in Wilhelmstadt, from its origins as a military fortress prison, through its role in Nazi-era "protective custody”, to housing the Nuremberg war criminals until 1987.
6 November 2025 - Annual General Meeting.
25 October 2025 - Konrad Adenauer Forum.
Konrad Adenauer served as West Germany's first Federal Chancellor from 1949-1963. Initially, it was thought that Adenauer would be Chancellor for only a short time, as he was already 73 years old by this time, earning him the nickname "Der Alte" (The Old One). He had previously served as Mayor of Cologne (1917-1933) and had been relieved as Mayor by the Nazis. He held the office for fourteen years, taking West Germany from postwar military occupation a long way towards national independence. A devout Catholic and strong anti-communist, he founded the Christian Democratic Union, led West Germany's NATO membership in 1955, championed European integration, and secured the release of the last German prisoners of war from Soviet captivity, transforming a defeated nation into a prosperous democracy. The interactive, multimedia exhibition brings the statesman and his visionary policies to life. It shows the extent to which the Adenauer era – with its crises and accomplishments – continues to shape German society today, and explores the democratic reconstruction of West Germany, in which Konrad Adenauer was a defining figure - as the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.
27 September 2025 - Bundeswehr Military History Museum Gatow.
The museum at Berlin-Gatow Airfield (formerly the Luftwaffe Museum) is a branch of the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden. While the latter presents a general cultural history of warfare, the Berlin museum focuses on aerial warfare as the most recent manifestation of military violence. The history of technology is understood as part of cultural history; and humankind in its various roles is placed at the centre of this history. This historic site brings to life knowledge and stories from over 120 years of military aviation and aerial warfare – told from multiple perspectives, critically, and with numerous personal references. This includes the history of the airfield, now a listed historical monument, from the Nazi Air Warfare School to the Cold War era and the stationing of the Royal Air Force. Gatow Airfield was also intimately involved with the Berlin Airlift. Since 1994, the site has been available to the museum for one of the world's largest, cross-bloc collections of aerial warfare equipment from the Cold War era.
28 August 2025 - "Hidden in Plain SIght" - Talk on Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence operations in Berlin during the Cold War.
All over Berlin there are houses and buildings that were used for intelligence and counter-intelligence by the USA, France, Great Britain, the GDR and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The history of some of them is well-known, other locations are completely unknown and still secret to most people. Our speaker will be Sigmund Clementz, a Norwegian journalist, who for the last ten years has conducted extensive research on intelligence and counter-intelligence in Berlin and Brandenburg during the Cold War. He has researched, located and visited more than 100 locations used by the CIA, NSA, MI6/SIS, KGB, GRU, Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung/Stasi and BND, among other services. This talk will be about a selection of the unknown locations in the former British, American and French Sectors of West Berlin: The somewhat mysterious places that people unsuspectingly walk past – or pass through. This is a collaborative event between the Allied Museum and the Berlin Historical Association, and will be held at the Japanese-German Centre Berlin, directly opposite Oskar-Helene-Heim U-Bahn station.
16 August 2025 - Guided tour of Jagdschloss Grunewald.
Grunewald Hunting Lodge – that conjures up the sound of the horn and the kill of wild game. Courtly hunting in the forests and lakes surrounding the picturesque Renaissance palace situated “in the green woods” had been a tradition since 1542. An enthusiastic hunter, Joachim II Hector, Elector of Brandenburg, had a stronghold constructed for himself. Frederick I implemented representative Baroque expansions and smaller court buildings at the beginning of the 18th century. However, the palace was primarily characterised through extensive modernisation work that was carried out from 1901-09 on the initiative of William II. The palace has been used as a museum building since 1932. The second main emphasis of the new permanent exhibition – on the ground floor of the building – is dedicated to the theme of “Courtly Hunting in Art.” Treasures are hidden in the Grunewald Hunting Lodge: Nearly 30 works by the painter Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553) and his son transport viewers back in time to the era of Martin Luther and the Reformation in Brandenburg. They display portraits of the Brandenburg sovereigns, while pointing out the virtues of a good ruler in a series of Exemplum (example) panels from the Berlin Palace.
26 July 2025 - Guided tour of Otto Weidt's Workshop for the Blind.
In 1936 Otto Weidt established a workshop to manufacture brooms and brushes in a Kreuzberg cellar, where he employed predominantly blind and deaf Jews. When he moved the factory to the Rosentalerstraße in 1940, tensions in the country grew and despite the workshop being declared a war-essential industry, the Gestapo began to deport his Jewish employees. Weidt fought to protect his workers from persecution and deportation by bribing the Gestapo, falsifying documents, and eventually hiding a family behind a back-less cupboard in one room of his shop. As the threat grew ever greater he found places for many more to hide. Among those he was able to save were Inge Deutschkron and Alice Licht, both non-blind young women in their twenties. Today, this museum to a citizen-hero is administered by the German Resistance Memorial Centre Foundation. It tells Weidt’s story with archival photos and interviews with some of those he saved.
28 June 2025 - Guided tour of the Museum of Medical History.
Rudolf Virchow was known as “the Pope of medicine” and "the father of modern pathology". The Prussian is not only one of the most famous doctors in the history of medicine, he is also the founder of the Museum of Medical History in Berlin, now part of the famous Charité hospital. The permanent collection currently shows some 750 objects comprising pathological-anatomical wet and dry specimens as well as models and graphics from central medical locations. The museum's special exhibitions focus on current aspects of medicine and medical history. They range from miracle healing in the ancient world to current advances in forensic medicine.
24 May 2025 - Guided tour of the Charlottenburg Mausoleum.
Queen Luise of Prussia may not be as well known today as she was just half a century ago. And yet her mark on Berlin, Prussia and Germany cannot be overlooked. Luise was something like the Princess Diana of the 19th century and inspired generations of German women and men. Even during her lifetime she was the object of almost cult-like veneration. Before she died, young and highly honoured, she gave birth to ten children as Queen of Prussia. Her descendants include King Harald V of Norway, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden, King Felipe VI of Spain and also King Charles III of Great Britain. Two of her children became Prussian Kings. And one even German Emperor, Wilhelm I. In 1871, Bismarck united the German states into one Reich under his crown. Like Luise, Wilhelm is buried in the mausoleum at Charlottenburg Palace. Luise's tomb in particular, created by Christian Daniel Rauch, is considered a masterpiece of art. We will have a very short overview of the Prussian kings outside and then go inside the mausoleum for a tour.
15 May 2025 - Talk by Prof Jason Lantzer about his book "Dwight Eisenhower and the Holocaust; A History".
Dwight Eisenhower’s encounter with the Holocaust altered how he understood the Second World War and shaped how he led the United States and the Western Alliance during the Cold War. From the moment he set foot in the concentration camp Ohrdruf in April 1945, defeating Nazi Germany took on a moral hue for Eisenhower that had largely been absent before. It spurred the belief that totalitarianism in all its forms needed to be confronted. This conviction shaped his presidency and solidified American engagement in the postwar world. The visit to Ohrdruf also spurred something else in Ike, a desire to make sure, in his words, that he would “get this.” When aides tried to get him to leave, he insisted on staying longer, on visiting building after building, of talking to prisoners, trying to understand what he was seeing and what had happened there. Jason Lantzer’s book (De Gruyter 2023) explores how Eisenhower’s shock and repulsion at seeing this concentration camp shaped his future policy towards the Holocaust.
26 April 2025 - Guided tour of the "Counterfeit Coins" exhibition at the Bode Museum.
As long as there has been money, there has been counterfeit money. Coins have been counterfeited or made from inferior materials. Notes have been reprinted or photocopied. Some people have even cut up genuine notes and glued them back together to make eleven out of ten - which is also a criminal offence. And there are even forgeries that are forgeries, because some forgeries are exciting (and valuable) for collectors. Counterfeiting is a punishable offence, damaging to the economy and not least to the unsuspecting user - but it is also tremendously exciting. The Numismatic Collection at the Bode Museum is currently showing an exhibition on counterfeiting entitled 'The Dark Side of Numismatics'. We are pleased to be able to offer a guided tour of the exhibition in English.
29 March 2025 - Guided tour of the "What is Enlightenment?" exhibition at the German Historical Museum.
“What is Enlightenment?” asked pastor Johann Friedrich Zöllner in 1783, writing for the Berlinische Monatsschrift. The editors of the monthly magazine put this question to their readers, thus igniting a debate that would shape the course of philosophy. The Enlightenment is one of the great moments in human history. An era of curiosity and openness, when knowledge, art and progress defeated superstition and narrow-mindedness. Was it really like that? Or was it not so bright and open, so enlightened? The German Historical Museum is devoting an exhibition to the era that still influences us today and distinguishes us from other cultures. The question is: What is the Enlightenment? The exhibition aims to make clear that the ideas of equality and tolerance prevalent then do not always correspond to those held today and, moreover, were often not implemented in practice.
22 February 2025 - Guided tour of the "News" exhibition at the Museum of Communication.
How is news created and disseminated? The Museum for Communication has created the first exhibition in Germany that revolves around news. From the first carrier pigeons that influenced the stock markets, to the false reports that moved the world, to the news industry and how it works. All this is explained not only with a historical outline, but also with the question of how news agencies work today. How they influence and are influenced. And the exhibition also explores the question of how neutral a news story (or a news agency) can be. We are pleased to be able to offer you a guided tour of this exhibition in the fantastic building that houses the museum near Potsdamer Platz.
13 February 2025 - BHA Trivia Quiz and 30th anniversary.
The Austrian writer Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach once said, "You have to know something to be able to hide the fact that you know nothing.”. However, this will not be the motto of the First Annual BHA Trivia Quiz, to which we would like to invite you. The "annual" is probably a little optimistic, but we will try to entertain you, amuse you - and challenge you. Most of the trivia will be about history, but some will be about other things in science and life. We will not be asking about key historical figures, or what the names of the other two guys in the Triumvirate were. But we will have some interesting facts for you from all over the world and from all times. You are not alone. You can form teams of up to five people, but you can also take on the challenge alone if you dare. But you will need a team name because you will be answering as a team. And of course, you can bring along guests to convince them that BHA is the perfect mix of fun and knowledge. In the end, the winning team gets a cup. Literally. Because we have BHA mugs for everyone in the team that wins our first trivia quiz.
18 January 2025 - Guided tour of the exhibition "Roads not Taken".
Alternative history research is not particularly popular at German universities. Questions such as "What would have happened if...?" are considered unscientific. But especially when you are at a crossroads, it sometimes helps to look at other paths that you have not taken. This is what the German Historical Museum is doing with the "Roads Not Taken" exhibition. The probabilities of history not being made are shown on the basis of 14 striking incisions in German history - prevented by coincidence or the weight of personal shortcomings. It is about the German wars of unification and the First World War, Stauffenberg's Hitler assassination and the Remagen Bridge, the Stalin Note and the Berlin Airlift and the fall of the Berlin Wall. We have the chance to take an English-language guided tour of this exhibition and to take a look at the other end of the crossroads.