Impact case study database
Securing the future of the AlliiertenMuseum for Berlin
1. Summary of the impact
Ball’s research, which focused on reinterpreting the history of British defence, security and intelligence between the 1940s and 1970s, had a substantial impact on the Tempelhof Projekt. The project is a major regeneration initiative, with a new AlliiertenMuseum at its heart, bringing economic and cultural benefits to Berlin and Germany. The AlliiertenMuseum at Tempelhof will be five times the size of the existing museum.
The research had five major impacts, it:
shaped the museum’s bid to the federal cultural commission;
helped to achieve the linking of museum sites across Europe;
influenced the design of three museum exhibitions;
problematized the traditional museum narrative;
contributed to funding success (€27 million in November 2015).
2. Underpinning research
- Overall significance of research
Two research projects, one on the comparative history of British intelligence culture [1, 2, 3], the second on the history of British defence policy [4], underpinned Ball’s work with the Tempelhof Projekt.
In both research projects Ball challenged accepted chronologies and frameworks of interpretation, especially the shift from ‘wartime’ to ‘post-war’. This academically supported shift to a more inclusive chronology was vital if the move of the Alliierten Museum to Tempelhof – a site with a legacy stretching back into the late 1930s – was to make sense. Traditionally, the Deutsch-Russisches Museum, Berlin-Karlshorst, the “other” Allied Museum, had claimed the Second World War as its domain.
2. Rethinking intelligence services in the first half of the 20th century. [1, 2 and 3]
Ball’s history of intelligence challenged five misperceptions, namely that: 1. British intelligence was focused on victory in war: this was rarely the case; 2. military intelligence agencies were less effective than civilian intelligence agencies: they were merely less good at boosting themselves; 3. the British intelligence machine was obsessed by either Communism or the Soviet Union: it was not; 4. British and US intelligence services were similar: they were not; 5. there was an essential continuity in British intelligence practice in the twentieth century: there was not.
These new insights developed from an AHRC-funded project, Cultures of Intelligence. Cultures of Intelligence demonstrated that the projection of the so-called “transnational complicity” of intelligence in the later Cold War back into the 1940s was to misunderstand discontinuity across the course of the century.
The challenge to orthodox periodization was particularly important since it enabled the museum to claim the period before July 1945 (when the western Allies arrived in Berlin) as its proper subject.
3. Changes in British defence and security policy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. [4]
Ball’s history of defence policy demonstrated that a fixation on the Cold War had blinded commentators to underlying structural change: in the early 1970s Britain abandoned the very concept of security that it had lived by since the 1860s. His research concluded that “the pieties of the standard national military narrative” obscured structural transformations and must be eschewed.
This research challenged the orthodox view, permeating the museum’s existing interpretative framework, that Britain renewed its commitment to European security by abandoning commitments in the Middle East and the Far East. Instead, Ball’s work demonstrated, Britain transformed the status of security altogether: from 1971 onwards Britain put little effort into external security anywhere, choosing instead to focus on social cohesion in the UK itself.
The implication for the museum was that its mission to explain the actions of Britain (alongside France, the USA and the Federal Republic of Germany) could not be delivered unless assumptions about Cold War continuity were problematized.
3. References to the research
AHRC Research Grant AH/J000175/1: ‘Cultures of Intelligence: Military Intelligence Services in Germany, Great Britain, and the USA, 1855-1947 (Britain, 1918-1947)’ (PI: Simon Ball, 2012-2016, £279,500). The AHRC project was formally linked with a parallel project Kulturen der Intelligence: Ein Forschungsprojekt zur Geschichte der militärischen Nachrichtendientse in Deutschland, Grossbritannien und der USA, 1900-1947, carried out at the Universities of Potsdam and Mannheim and funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation.
Simon Ball, Secret History: Writing the Rise of Britain’s Intelligence Services (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020).
Simon Ball, Philipp Gassert, Andreas Gestrich and Sönke Neitzel, eds, Cultures of Intelligence in the Era of the Two World Wars (Oxford: OUP, 2020), specifically Simon Ball and Andreas Gestrich, ‘Cultures of Intelligence in the Era of the World Wars: An Introduction’, pp. 1-12 and Simon Ball, ‘“Soldiers cannot write and amateurs do not understand”: History and the Formation of the Culture of Intelligence in Britain, 1917-1957’, pp. 213-232.
Simon Ball, ‘War and the State’ in the Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History eds. David Brown, Gordon Pentland and Robert Crowcroft (Oxford: OUP, 2018), pp. 525-543.
4. Details of the impact
Ball’s Role
The Director, Allied Museum appointed a new international advisory board specifically to assist her in generating the original and rigorous concepts that would underpin the Tempelhof Projekt. Tempelhof both looms large in German imagination (Nazi showpiece, centre of Berlin Airlift) and is physically huge: it required analysis and creativity. Ball was asked to challenge historical orthodoxies, to enable the museum to become bolder, and thus to make the whole Tempelhof plan feasible.
Specific impacts of Ball’s research**
- Shaping the museum’s bid to the cultural commission
Ball’s ‘Vision for the Future’ [Corroboration C, A] challenged the need to limit the museum in terms of scope and approach. Ball’s research provided one of the key bases for discussion at the International Advisory Board in November 2013; he was also able to discuss his research at length with the Director in Berlin. These discussions shaped the revised bid to the federal cultural commission. As the Director wrote, Ball’s contribution was an “important stimulus”. [B] The bid was submitted in June 2014. According to the Director: “Ball’s research had a significant impact on the BKM [federal cultural commission] bid.” [1, 2, 3 & 4: A, B, C, E]
2. Contributing to the success of the plans to link museum sites
In October 2013, Ball helped draft the so-called Magna Charta of Liberation Route Europe. Ball drew upon his research to warn against the tendency to merge intentions and outcomes. The Magna Charta formed the basis of a successful bid to secure start-up funding for Liberation Route Europe from the European Union. [1, 2, 3: A, D, F]
3. Changing the design and content of museum exhibitions
Ball’s work with the Tempelhof project in 2013 and 2014 was reflected in the philosophy behind three exhibitions that the museum developed during the bidding process. The Director wrote that the museum developed “specific exhibitions that would make the new research-based focus [advocated by Ball] tangible.” [A]
In July 2015, the AlliiertenMuseum opened its LRE launch exhibition – Liberation Route Europe: Routes of Liberation: European Legacies of the Second World War*. The title – stressing routes, rather than one route, was explicit acknowledgement of the impact that Ball’s research findings had on the project. (1: D, F, A]
In August 2015, the curators consulted Ball in the early planning stages of Cold War Berlin in 100 Objects and incorporated the nexus of military planning and intelligence operations he was researching. The Berlin press coverage of Cold War Berlin in 100 Objects was significant for the museum’s Tempelhof plans. [1, 2, 3, 4: G, A]
In October 2015, the museum launched Who Was Then a Nazi? Ball had suggested the de-Nazification topic as a means of highlighting the trans-war period that played such a large part in his own research. This exhibition was well received in both the German and international press, in the month before the Tempelhof bid was approved. [1, 2, 3: C, A]
4. Problematizing the traditional museum narrative
The museum’s curatorial, exhibit, and overall narrative strategy, changed to go beyond the “thank you and goodbye” content of previous exhibitions. Ball’s research contributed to this major shift of direction and achieved what the Director had requested: it problematized the traditional museum narrative. She wrote: “Ball’s research had a transformative impact on my understanding of British military and security policy.” [A] The curators decided that all future exhibitions must be “multi-perspectival” („Multiperspektivität“ lautet das Konzept). The Director concluded: “Ball’s research had a very significant impact on the campaign to enhance the appeal of the Museum.” [1, 2, 3, 4: A, H]
5. Contributing to funding successes
In November 2015, the federal government accepted the museum’s application to become the New Allied Museum at Tempelhof and allocated the €27.1 million that would enable its creation. [1, 2, 3, 4: E, I, A] In the wake of the successful bid, Ball was asked to renew his role with the museum, and continues to work on the implementation of the Tempelhof project. As the Acting Director of the Museum wrote: “I just can say that you are the only Military Historian on the Board and that I really think that your input and opinion would be very helpful in the coming five years, 2017-2022”. [1, 2, 3, 4: J]
5. Sources to corroborate the impact
A. Former Director of Allied Museum, Berlin (2010-2016) to Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation, University of Leeds, 23 May 2018.
B. Director, Allied Museum, Berlin to Chair of the International Advisory Board, Simon Ball, member of the Advisory Board and member of the Advisory Board, 30 September 2013.
C. Simon Ball, ‘The AlliiertenMuseum: Vision for the Future’, Advisory Board of the Allied Museum Paper, 5 November 2013.
D. Correspondence between Director, Allied Museum, Berlin and Simon Ball, on the topic of Liberation Route Europe, October to December 2013.
E. Director of Allied Museum, Berlin, ‘A Future for the Allied Museum: A Concept for the Location at Tempelhof Airport’, June 2014.
F. Austellung Routes of Liberation: European Legacies of the Second World War, 30.06 – 30.08.2015, AlliiertenMuseum.
G. Correspondence between Curators of Cold War Berlin in 100 Objects and Simon Ball, 1 September 2015.
H. Imagekommunikation: Postkartenkampagne in AlliiertenMuseum Markenentwicklung (Corporate Design), Advisory Board of the Allied Museum, Paper, 8 October 2015, pp. 23-27.
I. Director, Allied Museum, Berlin to Members of the International Advisory Board, 13 November 2015.
J. Acting Director, Allied Museum, Berlin, to Simon Ball, 26 July 2016.
Additional contextual information
Grant funding
| Grant number | Value of grant |
|---|---|
| AH/J000175/1 | £279,551 |