Next time you’re wandering down the wide, leafy boulevards of Schöneberg, central Berlin, look out for this unassuming but fascinating new museum. Called the Kleine Grosz Museum, the mesmerising little spot is housed in an old petrol station and is dedicated to the life and works of George Grosz.
For those not in the know, Grosz was a German artist known for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. His pictures often attacked what Grosz saw as the corrupt elements of German society, ridiculing militarists, capitalists and the bourgeoisie.
The Grosz Museum itself is laid out over two levels of a 1950s Shell station. And considering it’s such a tiny space (only 60 people are allowed in at a time), it’s marvellously done up. The ground floor houses a permanent collection that offers a chronological overview of Grosz’s career, while the upper level will show two temporary exhibitions per year – with the first of these looking at Grosz’s teenage years.
For the non-German speakers in the house, the Kleine Grosz Museum is actually a play on words. ‘Kleine’ means ‘little’, and ‘gross’ or ‘groß’ is ‘big’, so the museum roughly translates as the ‘Little Big Museum’. Cheeky stuff, eh? Here are a few more snaps of the place.
The Kleine Grosz Museum is open now at 18 Bülowstrasse and you can find out more about it here.
Now discover six other really, really small (and really, really good) museums around the world.