Bookplanet: Germany opens literature museum

BERLIN - Friedrich Nietzsche's death mask and Franz Kafka's manuscript of "The Trial" are among more than 1,300 exhibits featured at the new Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach, opening in the native town of German writer Friedrich Schiller.

"The Museum of Modern Literature is a place of memory which will keep the choir of all the single voices alive," German President Horst Koehler said in a statement prepared for Tuesday evening's opening ceremony. "And perhaps, if one listens carefully, one can hear something like a united voice of the nation's culture."

The $15.3 million building was designed by British architect David Chipperfield and is home to the collection of the German Literature Archive, which was founded in 1955 to preserve such literary remains as letters, documents and personal belongings of German writers.

The museum opens at 10 a.m. daily and entrance costs $6.25 for adults.

DAMN, WE SHOULD HAVE something like this in New York. Papers of Whitman, etc. I suppose the NYC Library is the closest thing we have to it.