The World

In 2007 the mauer museum decided to hold a new permanent exhibit on the history of NATO in order to do justice to NATO’s services for freedom. The exhibit is a logical supplement to the museum’s content. With 120 wall charts, 90 media stations and numerous original objects, it presents historical post-war developments and their contexts not only in Berlin, but worldwide.

Before the exhibit was opened Charles C. Clay, grandson of the U.S. General Lucius D. Clay, and Sergei Khrushchev unveiled the memorial plaque at the Allied checkpoint barracks at Checkpoint Charlie. For NATO HQ, NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy, Dr. Stephanie Babst, publicly bequeathed one of the first original, historical emblems of NATO. NATO General Secretary Anders F. Rasmussen visited and dignified the exhibit in 2012.

This exhibit – with 14 items loaned by Gandhi’s family estate, the “Charta 77” typewriter from Czechoslovakia, the hectograph from the illegal East German periodical Umweltblätter– can be considered the first exhibit on international non-violent struggle. Examples from various countries are used to show how justice prevailed without in turn committing injustice, from humour to non-violent mass demonstrations. These include the “Leipzig Monday demonstrations” and the Alexanderplatz demonstration of 4 November (East Berlin), which occurred five days after the Wall fell, and Moscow’s “Three Days in August”. On display in the museum is the 50 metre long white, blue and red flag that Moscow’s residents marched behind as they brought the putsch of the Old Communists to its knees