Anti-War Museum

Anti-War Museum - darkometer rating : 6 - A small private museum in Berlin with a big mission: promoting pacifism and – as the name implies – "fighting" against all war. In doing so it also illustrates the gruesome horrors of war quite drastically, and thus it is certainly a rather dark tourism destination as well. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: The history of the Anti War Museum is closely linked with the name Ernst Friedrich. He had joined the Labour Youth and the Social Democratic Party in Germany as a very young man and became an ardent activist in the anarchist and pacifist movements even before the First World War . Obviously, this was regarded as scandalous in militarist Prussia in that time. He was imprisoned several times – but persisted in his cause. As one of the leading figures in the Peace Movement after WW1, he published the seminal book "War Against War" in 1924. The following year he opened his "First International Anti-War Museum" in the centre of Berlin , after a donation enabled him to acquire an old building on Parochialstraße to house the museum. As German society was again becoming more militant and militarized especially from the late 1920s and early 1930s onwards, Friedrich was naturally increasingly ostracized. Worse still, he was arrested again in 1930, which this time also ruined him financially. The apparent final blow came shortly after the Nazis had seized power, when in March 1933 the SA destroyed his museum and appropriated the building.