100 years Anti-War Museum in Berlin
The German Ernst Friedrich and his fight for peace
Ernst Friedrich, born in 1894 in Breslau, Silesia (now Wroclaw in Poland), was a pacifist and anti-war activist. On October 1, 1925, he opened the world’s first anti-war museum in Berlin. In 1992, his grandson was able to reopen the museum in Berlin, which had been destroyed by the Nazis in 1933.
A dozen girls and boys of a first high school class sit huddled together on wooden kitchen chairs in an air-raid shelter, listening to the raspy male voice coming from an old, large rectangular radio, a so-called Volksempfänger (people’s receiver) warning “Attention! Attention!..“ that the enemy fighter squadrons are only half an hour away. The wail of an air-raid siren pierces the room.
Fortunately for the students, it is not World War II, but the year 2025. And the air-raid shelter has “only” been restored to its original condition – and is part of the Anti-War Museum in Berlin. It was founded a hundred years ago by the pacifist Ernst Friedrich. His grandson, Tommy Spree, is guiding the class through the rooms on this day.
My grandfather told me: “Both world wars were organized in Berlin. So there should at least be one anti-war museum.”
In the main room on the ground floor, Tommy Spree shows the ninth graders a film that tells the story of his grandfather and the museum. “The beginning of World War I”, annouces the narrator. “Today, the general enthusiasm for war and the ignorance of the German population, who allowed themselves to be persuaded that war was a harmless stroll, seem strange.” Not so Ernst Friedrich. Born on February 25, 1894, in Breslau, Silesia, he was 20 years old when the war began in 1914.
The chorus of a soldier’s song by the German Freikorps (Armed volunteer formation) from the same year goes like this: “The joyful journey that made us wise is over. For we are marching to Flanders into bloody battle..”
When Ernst Friedrich refuses to participate in the murderous plan, he is placed in an observation ward for the mentally ill. In post-war Berlin during the Roaring Twenties, he becomes a key figure in the radical, anti-authoritarian youth movement. He gives speeches, organizes workers’ art exhibitions, and publishes anarchist magazines, which earn him more than a hundred house searches and several prison terms. “They are all related to so-called violations of press law. In plain language, that means insulting some authority or other,” says Agnes Imhof, who has written a biography of Ernst Friedrich. She sees the pacifist above all as an important mediator and multiplier of his time. “He really knew just about everyone who was anyone in that circle and was of any significance, he experienced pretty much everything that was important in that movement, and he read everything that was important in the peace movement - and spread the word”. And because, of course, he was able to reach a wide audience with works such as “Krieg dem Kriege!” (War against War!).
“War against War!”, Friedrich’s most important book, was published in 1924. More than 180 photos, many from the archives of the renowned surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch, show the horrors of World War I. One soldier is missing his entire lower jaw. Another has had both eyes torn out by shrapnel. Friedrich contrasts the photos with commentary in four languages. “The comments are satirical responses to the propaganda lies that were told to people at the time”, explains biographer Imhof. Sayings such as of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg’s “The war is doing me good, like a spa treatment” – and then you see those shot-up bodies in contrast.
With the proceeds from the book sales, Friedrich is able to purchase an old building in Berlin. There, on October 1, 1925, he opens the Anti-War Museum - the first of its kind worldwide. After seizing power, the Nazis transform it into a torture chamber.
In exile in Brussels, Belgium, Friedrich opens a new anti-war museum, but it is destroyed in 1940 by the invading German troops. His plan to build a third museum in France after the war with the compensation he received as a Nazi victim fails.
Ernst Friedrich dies on May 2, 1967. It is not until fifteen years later, in 1982, during the era of the peace movement, that his grandson Tommy Spree is able to open the third Anti-War Museum in Berlin. It displays photos, films, and war relics ranging from tin soldiers to gas masks, and has an adjoining “Peace Gallery.”
On this day in 2025, Spree tells the school class, who have felt a glimpse of the horror of war during his guided tour, that he met his grandfather when he was 16, so around their age. And he concludes with a few words from Ernst Friedrich that they should take with them:
“We actually have the opportunity to make our planet a wonderful world. We just have to stop dropping bombs as soon as political conflicts arise. We have to negotiate with each other and we have to listen to each other.”
This text is a transcript of my radio reports for German public radio, translated by me.