Founded in 1994 and opened to the public in 1995, we are the only museum in Germany that has a permanent exhibition commemorating the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union. This war is known as the Great Patriotic War in Soviet and post-Soviet historiography.

However, the history of the museum extends back to 1967. On the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution on 7 November 1967 the museum was established as “Museum of the Unconditional Surrender of Fascist Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945”. Its purpose was to set up at the historic location a place to memorialize the heroic deeds of the Red Army. Originally open only to Soviet soldiers it could later be viewed also by the general public.

The continued existence of the museum was threatened when the Soviet/Russian troops withdrew from Germany from 1990 to1994, but the German and Soviet sides were able to agree on its further use. Starting in 1991 a German-Soviet(later a German-Russian) commission of experts developed a concept for a new permanent exhibition. The new museum finally opened on 10 May 1995, the 50th anniversary of the end of the World War II in Europe. Originally an exclusively German-Russian association, in 1997 another nation became involved with the addition of the then “Museum of the Great Patriotic War” (today the “Museum of the Ukraine in the Second World War”) in Kiev, followed one year later by the current four-nation trusteeship when the “Museum of the Great Patriotic War” in Minsk, Belarus, was included. After complete reorganisation of the collection, in 2013 we opened our new permanent exhibition, “Germany and the Soviet Union in the Second World War”, which has met with lively approvalever since.

The Museum Berlin-Karlshorst is 100% financed by the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media of Germany.