A Königsberg board game box made of amber from 1607, Queen Luise's dressing gown from 1806, the poster for the exhibition "40 Jahre DDR" in East Berlin, or the bunk bed from a refugee shelter in Kassel from 2015 – the collection of the Deutsches Historisches Museum comprises around one million objects of German history. The DHM presents a selection of around 200 holdings, some never before shown, surprising finds and new acquisitions in the exhibition "Objekte. Geschichte. Geschichten. Blick in die Sammlung". The exhibition offers insights into the practice of collecting and questions the exhibits presented about their origin and significance.
In the first part, the exhibition is devoted to the DHM collection as such, which over the course of its 150-year history has itself become a historical document. The tour follows formative epochs in the eventful history of the house between 1883 and 2006: the "Ruhmeshalle der preußisch-brandenburgischen Armee", the army museum of the Nazi regime, the Museum für deutsche Geschichte of the GDR, and the merger with the DHM founded in West Berlin in 1987.