ABSTRACT
The strong connections between science and technology and warfare during the course of the twentieth century often feature in museum exhibitions – sometimes explicitly, in other caes less so. More specifically, exhibits covering the second half of the twentieth century tend to be shaped by Cold War narratives as their dominating global historical context. While both dimensions – the military and the scientific – are intricately linked to each other, the museum world remains to be partitioned into phenotypes, distinguished not only by appearance but also through behaviour: military museums analyse armed conflicts in all of their dimensions, while science and technology (at least in the past) often focussed primarily on research and discovery processes. Yet, resorting to dichotomous views, i.e. highlighting the violent or the peaceful endeavours of human nature in museology, does not do justice to the complexities of the Cold War. This contribution argues that a stronger focus on object biographies in exhibition planning can help to overcome barriers for the public engagement with the Cold War history, as it necessarily leads to adding a human interest in scientific research to the presentation.
This essay reflects on the presentation of a Bell Systems travelling-wave maser device, which served both as a radar signal amplifier in intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) interception systems and contributed to the Nobel Prize-winning first detection of the cosmic microwave background. While the scientific equipment for the latter has been on display in the astronomy department of the Deutsches Museum since the 1990s, the presentation of the former artefacts in a new gallery in 2024 allows audiences to reevaluate previous narratives. By focusing on the object biography relating to the transfer and transformation of knowledge, the exhibit will also introduce a social dimension to the public display: the history of migration of scientists to the United States from Europe after the Second World War.
