Tank Museum sells World War II quiz: Left condemns “tasteless product”
A citizen alerted Dietmar Bartsch to the game, according to the Bundestag member's office. And the Left Party politician considers what he saw in the online shop of the German Tank Museum in Munster unacceptable. It's unacceptable for a museum that "wouldn't exist without a lot of taxpayer money and without the Bundeswehr to sell such a tasteless product," Bartsch told the Berliner Zeitung.
The museum in Lower Saxony is "closely linked to the Bundeswehr," the Left Party member emphasizes. Either no one there noticed the article, or it isn't perceived as a problem. "Both would be worrying."
The board game Bartsch procured is called "World War II – Trivia Game" and is advertised as a quiz game about World War II . It's not the museum's own product, but comes from a Danish company. It includes 1,800 English questions, a "special offer" for €50 instead of €69.99. According to the description, players can duel against opponents "to correctly answer questions about everything from the Western Front, the Eastern Front, the Pacific, submarines, naval battles, years, key figures, weapons, tank battles, the Allies, the Axis powers, and much more."
The goal of the game is to "conquer three enemy capitals as quickly as possible and answer one question correctly in each of the six question categories, while preventing one of your opponents from capturing your marker on a battlefield." Age rating: 16+. The shop also offers small self-propelled howitzers, T-shirts, and reusable cups.
The German Tank Museum Munster has two sponsors: the city of Munster and the Bundeswehr. The Ministry of Defense, headed by Boris Pistorius ( SPD ), is responsible for the latter. The Bundeswehr provides a "teaching collection of the Panzer Troops School." A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defense stated in response to an inquiry that the exhibited objects are owned by the armed forces. They will continue to be used "also for military and operational training." Operation and "content-related knowledge transfer" are the responsibility of the city. The Tank Museum is one of the most visited museums in Germany.
Exhibits can also be viewed online: The museum's own YouTube channel enjoys great popularity, boasting 136,000 subscribers. Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil is also a prominent advocate—Munster, which has a major Bundeswehr base, is located in the SPD chairman's constituency.
In 2018, the federal government released nearly 20 million euros for the renovation of the aging building. The roof is leaking, and exhibits are in danger of rotting. However, the money hasn't been disbursed yet, which the city's CDU mayor explained in February, citing different responsibilities: While the building formally belongs to the city, it is built on federal property, Marcus Grube told NDR. This makes disbursement difficult.
"I'm troubled by the speed with which the 'war-readiness' proclaimed by the Defense Minister is permeating politics and society," says Dietmar Bartsch . Especially within the Bundeswehr, there should be no normalization, "not even a playful one," of the Second World War and the "conquest of enemy capitals." "Any form of nostalgia is out of place here," says the Left Party member.
While the Bundeswehr is undeniably connected to the museum, the Ministry of Defense believes it is the wrong target for criticism. "The online shop is the responsibility of the Panzer Museum," says the ministry spokesperson. So what does the museum say about the quiz?
Director Ralf Raths's response may come as a surprise. "Mr. Bartsch has a point," he said in an interview with this newspaper. The quiz is indeed "our most difficult article." It "caused those responsible for it from the very beginning" and was "stretched to the limit." In the end, they decided to offer the game anyway. "Ultimately, the knowledge transfer outweighed the questionable imagery for us."
Raths, who studied politics and history in Hanover, has been director of the German Tank Museum since 2013. "The museum fundamentally follows the guiding principle of conveying the tank as a machine of violence and avoiding any trivialization," he says of the museum's concept. "Suffering and death are central perspectives that cannot be ignored."
However, contrary to what Bartsch suggests, no significant amount of tax money has flowed to the institution in the past. They are still waiting for the nearly 20 million, but things now seem to be moving forward, says Raths. "We were pleased at the time that not only the CDU/CSU and SPD, but also the Greens and the Left Party, had approved the subsidy from the budget."
Berliner-zeitung
