Berlin is a modern typography hub, the influence Spiekermann has in the DACH region and maybe even beyond is hard to overestimate.
Apart from that if you come to Berlin and you are the kind of person that would have liked the Buchstabenmuseum you should try to get an opportunity to visit the crashed space station.
> Fixed costs and a lack of financial support are forcing us to take this step. In addition, the general cultural situation in Berlin is very precarious. It was a very difficult decision for us.
Speaking as someone with a company in the arts based in berlin:
Sister comments get excited about population growth, gentrification, rising rent prices, and everyone's favorite c-word. Those are all real things that are happening in berlin, that are favorite bogeymen to complain about at parties. None of them apply here.
Rising rents are much more of a residential problem. Prime commercial rents are also rising, but at 1.1%/yr... and non-prime/specialty commercial like the subway arches in Hansaviertel are generally stable or declining since COVID.
The museum cites loss of premises as a factor. The Deutsche bahn leases the subway arches typically on 5 or 10 year terms. Since they moved in 2016 it sounds like DB is declining to renew the contract and they are facing another move.
But the really big elephant in the room is a lack of funding. The museum has always been proudly privately funded and volunteer operated. But that still exposes them to indirect effects from public funding cuts, and berlin cut 13% of its culture funding in 2024. Private donations are down 6% year over year, and what there is has seen significant diversion to political and Ukraine support efforts. Similar impacts happen in volunteer time, but we're all waiting on the 5-yearly survey from 2024 to be released to get real data.
Fixed costs are often the killer for museums, and the buchstaben museum blamed these in particular. Heating and electricity, and general climate maintenance in nonstandard spaces like the subway arches is always expensive, and museums are relatively energy intensive to begin with. Wholesale electricity costs jumped 5-7x in 2021-22. They've since come back down to a more modest 30-40% increase, but that's still a huge problem for a small, privately funded institution like this. Especially coupled with public funding loss, reduced private donations, and staring down a move.
Bear in mind, German non profits can't create endowments like American ones can. Most categories can't even roll budget from one year to the next!
Hope this helps you understand why so many privately funded cultural institutions are dying in Germany and Berlin right now.
Is there any political momentum to deal with this, for example allowing at least some level of endowments? I respect the purity of the ideal, but it sounds like it is backfiring right now.
The German tax laws for charities around having to spend donations in “a timely fashion“ are being loosened, but it’s really more a question of proper tax advice. It is a common myth in volunteer-run organizations than you cannot create long-term financial stability. You just have to lay out a plan and argue for it.
More of a problem is dependency on public funding or any kind of grant, where typically there are limitations on what you can use that grant money for, and “saving for the future“ is not one of them.
Partial explanation: Gentrification + increased costs because of inflation is my understanding.
Berlin has been relatively underpopulated ever since WW2 which seems to have contributed to a de-gentrified situation which allowed an unique culture to grow. But time's are changing.
What does this even mean? Does this mean "low cost of living"? I feel like gentrification due to post-war generational housing shortages is now just a catch all term for increasing cost of living in general.
Berlin lost over 1.5m inhabitants in the time since 1945 to its lowest point after reunification (due to being a divided city without much industrial jobs).
At it height 1 in 5 apartments were empty in Berlin which pushed rents down below 4 EUR per square meter. A 3 bedroom apartment for less than 500 EURs a month. This was de-gentrification the parent mentioned.
Since 2010 population grew and now Berlin has housing shortages like every other capital in Europe. Rents now top 20 EUR per sqm.
Sure it's mostly about cost of living but also relatively good access to abandoned buildings (and perhaps other services) that could be used for non housing purposes. A lot of Berlin clubs and art venues started in buildings that were abandoned if I understand correctly.
I recall that there were interesting similarities after depopulation events like the black plague. Suddenly there's a surplus of built infrastructure.
Berlin is the best proof that capitalism destroys culture. We should probably find a way to prevent that from happening. The current German and Berlin government would rather accelerate it though - besides the funding thing, they're currently ramming a highway expansion straight through a cultural area.
To answer the question in replies, good East Berlin developed in the relative anarchy when the Soviet Union collapsed and no new system was really established yet. (Being able to exchange deutschemarks for groceries is not capitalism - they had that in communism too.) The western end of Berlin, by contrast, wasn't culturally interesting in the same way, and didn't change much when the wall fell. Not that symphony orchestras and painting galleries aren't culture, but they're not the kind we're talking about here, the kind that develops bottom up when people are given the freedom to do what they want.
dang informed me by email that this is a bad comment and I deserve to be, and have been, punished for posting it.
"but it does indicate that an abundance of cheap housing/buildings makes culture thrive."
Not on its own, though. Plenty of abandoned/underpopulated cheap places in europe that do not thrive. But it certainly is beneficial.
(in the case of Berlin, there was for example a special effect, that all germans living in west berlin did not had to go to the army (to not having to shoot their relatives in east berlin) - so lots of counterculture people evading the army came to Berlin and they created culture)
Don't you think that a lot of that politics stems from politicians wanting the value of houses in places where they (or their friends) live to go up rather than down though?
But capitalism doesn't have an interest in prohibiting housing being built in certain areas or limiting density to a fraction of what was possible 130 years ago.
Berlin, like other large cities, suffers from cancerous population density growth. It's sucking the life away from nearby cities, while the cost of living keeps skyrocketing.
Thank you for posting this! I just spent a very enjoyable hour there and I’m sad others won’t be able to do the same in future.
They appear to work with many institutions in a consultancy capacity so I hope that this will still continue in future even though the museum itself has to close.
This is a bummer - headed to Berlin for the first time in a few weeks and hoped to visit. Any recommendations for similarly geek-oriented side trips in Berlin?
Technikmuseum [0] has many different technology-related exhibitions. And the Spectrum (separate building) has a lot of physics- and science experiments you can actively try out. Loved it as a kid.
Not sure if it counts as geek-oriented but take a look at the guided tours by Berliner Unterwelten [1]. They are really good. (Tours in English are available)
Money spent on startups isn't charity, you do it in the expectation of (in aggregate) profit -- so it's not rivalrous with charities. People who might support museums earn money on investments that they can then use for charities.
If you believe that you are better at picking winners (slop startups vs non-slop startups) than the rest of the investment world, then that's a valuable skill that you could use to earn a lot of money that you could then use to support museums if you choose.
It's a deeply capitalist perspective to respond to a criticism of the excesses and inefficiency of wild, unfounded capital speculation with 'Well if you so smart, why ain't you rich?!?'
Well, let's go with a learning exercise. Do you think that you should dismiss the fact that someone said something dumb because you perceive them as being on the right side? Then I guess it's good for you.
Well if you are very against capitalism, that would be pretty bad, but ONLY if you are then also a hypocrite working for amounts of money that would make anyone not in the top 20 percent of the world population's eyes pop;
Deduct extra points if you ever accepted stock options, ever tried to start a startup or did a side hustle because you wanted MORE than the bare minimum you need to survive. (Like those capitalist pigs do!)
Or if you are typing this from a mobile phone or laptop computer that costs an amount of money that would be unimaginable to the typical person for most of human history.
Otherwise you're golden. Socialism truly is the superior moral position. It's so obvious we can all agree. And you should lead by example by giving away everything that you might need less than some other random poor person out there.
You're right, depending on what someone's position is. If someone full on HATES capitalism, then I don't think it's a strawman. But if someone is an average mixed economy guy, sure then it would be an unfair strawman I agree. Also it's a bit tongue in the cheek, because I got a bit tired seeing a lot of anti-capitalist rants here in HN comments that likely come from iPhone socialists typing this while living lives absolutely blessed by the fruits of capitalism. It's prettt easy to disagree about the amount of capitalism we want in our society, but to be anti-capitalist? Seems weird and hypocritical if you are a highly paid tech worker that uses most of his/her money for their own benefit, or otherwise personally acting very "capitalist" in your own life but wishing everyone else to act more socialist.
Is that so unreasonable? Lots of people post that Wall Street corporations are dominated by short term, next quarter thinking. If that were true, then shorting those stocks would be a profitable plan. It seems reasonable to point out that if one is so sure corporations were going to tank because of short term thinking, they could get rich by shorting the stock.
Looking at a chart of the S&P 500 over decades, it's hard to see how anyone could make money by betting on corporations only being interested in short term results.
The S&P 500 is a list. 80+% of the companies on that list when it started are no longer on it.
Betting on business in general over long time periods tends to be a winning proposition. Betting on an individual company tends to be less of a winner in general.
Businesses do tend to fail eventually. Their business model become obsolete, the market for their product fades away, they strangle themselves with bureaucracy, they zig instead of zag. That isn't short-term-itis.
But you cannot grow a small company into a large one by concentrating on short term profits. The S&P 500 is composed of 500 large companies.
Imagine if you were selling MSFT short every quarter since they IPO'd in the '80s.
I agree completely. Museums, culture, and other wasteful/pointless excesses should be deducted from profits - at the discretion of the profiteer - only after the actually useful work of poisoning the drinking water to generate pornography is complete.
Sad to hear.
Berlin is a modern typography hub, the influence Spiekermann has in the DACH region and maybe even beyond is hard to overestimate.
Apart from that if you come to Berlin and you are the kind of person that would have liked the Buchstabenmuseum you should try to get an opportunity to visit the crashed space station.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-base
The Museum Der Dinge is also worth a visit: https://museumderdinge.org/
Is there also a Museum der Tatsachen somewhere?
https://people.umass.edu/klement/tlp/tlp.html
As for why they are closing:
> Fixed costs and a lack of financial support are forcing us to take this step. In addition, the general cultural situation in Berlin is very precarious. It was a very difficult decision for us.
Via Deepl, original here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DLuAW5DIANV/
> cultural situation in Berlin is very precarious
Can someone please elaborate this for someone who is absolutely clueless about Berlin?
Speaking as someone with a company in the arts based in berlin:
Sister comments get excited about population growth, gentrification, rising rent prices, and everyone's favorite c-word. Those are all real things that are happening in berlin, that are favorite bogeymen to complain about at parties. None of them apply here.
Rising rents are much more of a residential problem. Prime commercial rents are also rising, but at 1.1%/yr... and non-prime/specialty commercial like the subway arches in Hansaviertel are generally stable or declining since COVID.
The museum cites loss of premises as a factor. The Deutsche bahn leases the subway arches typically on 5 or 10 year terms. Since they moved in 2016 it sounds like DB is declining to renew the contract and they are facing another move.
But the really big elephant in the room is a lack of funding. The museum has always been proudly privately funded and volunteer operated. But that still exposes them to indirect effects from public funding cuts, and berlin cut 13% of its culture funding in 2024. Private donations are down 6% year over year, and what there is has seen significant diversion to political and Ukraine support efforts. Similar impacts happen in volunteer time, but we're all waiting on the 5-yearly survey from 2024 to be released to get real data.
Fixed costs are often the killer for museums, and the buchstaben museum blamed these in particular. Heating and electricity, and general climate maintenance in nonstandard spaces like the subway arches is always expensive, and museums are relatively energy intensive to begin with. Wholesale electricity costs jumped 5-7x in 2021-22. They've since come back down to a more modest 30-40% increase, but that's still a huge problem for a small, privately funded institution like this. Especially coupled with public funding loss, reduced private donations, and staring down a move.
Bear in mind, German non profits can't create endowments like American ones can. Most categories can't even roll budget from one year to the next!
Hope this helps you understand why so many privately funded cultural institutions are dying in Germany and Berlin right now.
> everyone's favorite c-word
I guess I'm not in the 'everyone' group as I'm not sure what you are referring to here. Any chance you would explain for the ignorant?
Is there any political momentum to deal with this, for example allowing at least some level of endowments? I respect the purity of the ideal, but it sounds like it is backfiring right now.
The German tax laws for charities around having to spend donations in “a timely fashion“ are being loosened, but it’s really more a question of proper tax advice. It is a common myth in volunteer-run organizations than you cannot create long-term financial stability. You just have to lay out a plan and argue for it.
More of a problem is dependency on public funding or any kind of grant, where typically there are limitations on what you can use that grant money for, and “saving for the future“ is not one of them.
Partial explanation: Gentrification + increased costs because of inflation is my understanding.
Berlin has been relatively underpopulated ever since WW2 which seems to have contributed to a de-gentrified situation which allowed an unique culture to grow. But time's are changing.
Look at this pop graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_population_statistics Still hasn't caught up with the peak in the 1930:s.
>a de-gentrified situation
What does this even mean? Does this mean "low cost of living"? I feel like gentrification due to post-war generational housing shortages is now just a catch all term for increasing cost of living in general.
Berlin lost over 1.5m inhabitants in the time since 1945 to its lowest point after reunification (due to being a divided city without much industrial jobs).
At it height 1 in 5 apartments were empty in Berlin which pushed rents down below 4 EUR per square meter. A 3 bedroom apartment for less than 500 EURs a month. This was de-gentrification the parent mentioned.
Since 2010 population grew and now Berlin has housing shortages like every other capital in Europe. Rents now top 20 EUR per sqm.
Sure it's mostly about cost of living but also relatively good access to abandoned buildings (and perhaps other services) that could be used for non housing purposes. A lot of Berlin clubs and art venues started in buildings that were abandoned if I understand correctly.
I recall that there were interesting similarities after depopulation events like the black plague. Suddenly there's a surplus of built infrastructure.
The city got expensive, but then other cities in the east are still pretty affordable. Leipzig, Dresden, Jena..
[dead]
Berlin is the best proof that capitalism destroys culture. We should probably find a way to prevent that from happening. The current German and Berlin government would rather accelerate it though - besides the funding thing, they're currently ramming a highway expansion straight through a cultural area.
To answer the question in replies, good East Berlin developed in the relative anarchy when the Soviet Union collapsed and no new system was really established yet. (Being able to exchange deutschemarks for groceries is not capitalism - they had that in communism too.) The western end of Berlin, by contrast, wasn't culturally interesting in the same way, and didn't change much when the wall fell. Not that symphony orchestras and painting galleries aren't culture, but they're not the kind we're talking about here, the kind that develops bottom up when people are given the freedom to do what they want.
dang informed me by email that this is a bad comment and I deserve to be, and have been, punished for posting it.
Did the prior good Belin culture develop under a economic system other than capitalism?
Yeah I don't agree that this proves something about capitalism but it does indicate that an abundance of cheap housing/buildings makes culture thrive.
"but it does indicate that an abundance of cheap housing/buildings makes culture thrive."
Not on its own, though. Plenty of abandoned/underpopulated cheap places in europe that do not thrive. But it certainly is beneficial.
(in the case of Berlin, there was for example a special effect, that all germans living in west berlin did not had to go to the army (to not having to shoot their relatives in east berlin) - so lots of counterculture people evading the army came to Berlin and they created culture)
It's politics that prevents the construction of cheap housing, not capitalism.
Don't you think that a lot of that politics stems from politicians wanting the value of houses in places where they (or their friends) live to go up rather than down though?
Capitalism is a subset of politics
But capitalism doesn't have an interest in prohibiting housing being built in certain areas or limiting density to a fraction of what was possible 130 years ago.
It doesn't? People owning housing has an interest in keeping housing supply low to make the value of their assets go up.
[dead]
Start here, you can use a translator
https://www.rbb24.de/politik/beitrag/2025/02/chialo-einsparu...
Municipal/state government cutting budgets.
Berlin, like other large cities, suffers from cancerous population density growth. It's sucking the life away from nearby cities, while the cost of living keeps skyrocketing.
What cultural situation are they referring to?
I believe they mean "funding for culture," i.e. public grants for museums.
Thank you for posting this! I just spent a very enjoyable hour there and I’m sad others won’t be able to do the same in future.
They appear to work with many institutions in a consultancy capacity so I hope that this will still continue in future even though the museum itself has to close.
This is a bummer - headed to Berlin for the first time in a few weeks and hoped to visit. Any recommendations for similarly geek-oriented side trips in Berlin?
The Computerspielemuseum is worth a visit. https://www.computerspielemuseum.de/
100%, you can play a lot of retro arcades for free after u paid the 5€ entry fee. 10/10 experience
Totally! Dont miss it.
Technikmuseum [0] has many different technology-related exhibitions. And the Spectrum (separate building) has a lot of physics- and science experiments you can actively try out. Loved it as a kid.
[0] https://technikmuseum.berlin/en/
Not sure if it counts as geek-oriented but take a look at the guided tours by Berliner Unterwelten [1]. They are really good. (Tours in English are available)
[1] https://www.berliner-unterwelten.de/en/index.html
Berlin is an open air museum for typography
As is Vienna. Definitely a typographers dream.
https://www.stadtschrift.at
Delightful!
In a similar vein there's the Neon Museum in Warsaw.
https://www.neonmuzeum.org/english
Oh no! We were just there a couple of months ago. I hope they find a good home for their collection.
It's sad. I did not know this exists, where do people find locations like this?
Good that I saw this post on its last day of opening. Gonna pay a visit today. Typography is fascinating. Thanks for sharing.
Why do they need a museum dedicated to back stabbing?
Strictly, a museum dedicated to bookstaffing!
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/bookstaff#English
Probably the money gambled away on slop AI startups in a single week could sustain thousands of museums like this for decades
"Gambled away" is an unfair characterization. People will get rich off of AI, too. We just don't know who yet.
Nobody is going to make money on museums. As such, you either provide for them through tax dollars or you convince people to donate.
Or the money they sent to Ukraine.
Money spent on startups isn't charity, you do it in the expectation of (in aggregate) profit -- so it's not rivalrous with charities. People who might support museums earn money on investments that they can then use for charities.
If you believe that you are better at picking winners (slop startups vs non-slop startups) than the rest of the investment world, then that's a valuable skill that you could use to earn a lot of money that you could then use to support museums if you choose.
It's a deeply capitalist perspective to respond to a criticism of the excesses and inefficiency of wild, unfounded capital speculation with 'Well if you so smart, why ain't you rich?!?'
It's a deeply non-capitalist perspective to demand that everyone respond to dumb posts with sentiment instead of analysis.
> a deeply non-capitalist perspective
This seems to have been said as if it is a bad thing. Is it, or did I misread what you meant?
Well, let's go with a learning exercise. Do you think that you should dismiss the fact that someone said something dumb because you perceive them as being on the right side? Then I guess it's good for you.
It turns out they were being triggered by sentiment to respond with more sentiment, but they think their sentiment is "analysis."
Well if you are very against capitalism, that would be pretty bad, but ONLY if you are then also a hypocrite working for amounts of money that would make anyone not in the top 20 percent of the world population's eyes pop;
Deduct extra points if you ever accepted stock options, ever tried to start a startup or did a side hustle because you wanted MORE than the bare minimum you need to survive. (Like those capitalist pigs do!)
Or if you are typing this from a mobile phone or laptop computer that costs an amount of money that would be unimaginable to the typical person for most of human history.
Otherwise you're golden. Socialism truly is the superior moral position. It's so obvious we can all agree. And you should lead by example by giving away everything that you might need less than some other random poor person out there.
Whew, it's like strawman bingo!!
You're right, depending on what someone's position is. If someone full on HATES capitalism, then I don't think it's a strawman. But if someone is an average mixed economy guy, sure then it would be an unfair strawman I agree. Also it's a bit tongue in the cheek, because I got a bit tired seeing a lot of anti-capitalist rants here in HN comments that likely come from iPhone socialists typing this while living lives absolutely blessed by the fruits of capitalism. It's prettt easy to disagree about the amount of capitalism we want in our society, but to be anti-capitalist? Seems weird and hypocritical if you are a highly paid tech worker that uses most of his/her money for their own benefit, or otherwise personally acting very "capitalist" in your own life but wishing everyone else to act more socialist.
Is that so unreasonable? Lots of people post that Wall Street corporations are dominated by short term, next quarter thinking. If that were true, then shorting those stocks would be a profitable plan. It seems reasonable to point out that if one is so sure corporations were going to tank because of short term thinking, they could get rich by shorting the stock.
Alas, the market can remain irrational longer than I can remain solvent.
Looking at a chart of the S&P 500 over decades, it's hard to see how anyone could make money by betting on corporations only being interested in short term results.
The S&P 500 is a list. 80+% of the companies on that list when it started are no longer on it.
Betting on business in general over long time periods tends to be a winning proposition. Betting on an individual company tends to be less of a winner in general.
Businesses do tend to fail eventually. Their business model become obsolete, the market for their product fades away, they strangle themselves with bureaucracy, they zig instead of zag. That isn't short-term-itis.
But you cannot grow a small company into a large one by concentrating on short term profits. The S&P 500 is composed of 500 large companies.
Imagine if you were selling MSFT short every quarter since they IPO'd in the '80s.
I agree completely. Museums, culture, and other wasteful/pointless excesses should be deducted from profits - at the discretion of the profiteer - only after the actually useful work of poisoning the drinking water to generate pornography is complete.
Long live the overlords.
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[flagged]
You could just have posted a Wikipedia link instead of AI slop ;)
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchstabenmuseum
It opened in 2016.
This post is likely the most attention it has ever received.
It opened in 2005 and moved in 2016