''Polytechnical'' Museums in the GDR - A Failed Attempt at Establishing Marxist Science Centres?

At the end of the 1950s plans for a grand network of ″polytechnical museums″ were developed in the GDR. Every major industrial centre in East Germany was supposed to establish one of these museums, and the idea was that each museum would specialise on the branch of technology that was most important to the region it was located in. More importantly, these museums were to transcend ″traditional″ museums of technology, because polytechnical exhibitions were to place technology in its social context, as well as explain technological principles. However, only a small portion of these plans was actually implemented. By 1989, only one museum in the GDR still carried the attribute ″polytechnical″.

In this colloquium, the roots and connotations of the word ″polytechnical″ as well as the development of the idea for museums of that name will be traced. Those exhibitions that were classified as ″polytechnical″, as well as some that werenÕt but one might have expected to be, will then be presented in a little detail. Questions such as who designed these exhibitions, who visited them and what they conveyed will be addressed. Studying these issues not only reveals a lot about the GDR's museum world, but also throws some light on the distinction between science museums and science centres.