Old Post Office (Meiningen)
The old post office in the town of Meiningen is a listed half-timbered house in the Franconian style. With the “Kunsthaus Meiningen”, it houses an important cultural institution in the southern Thuringian district town. It shows exhibitions of contemporary visual arts , is a cultural venue and offers work opportunities for local and foreign artists with 14 studios . There is also a bar in the house.
history
The old post office is located in the western part of the historic old town . It consists of a four-storey half-timbered house in the Henneberg-Franconian style from the early 17th century and some courtyard-side extensions that were built later. The half-timbered house itself is a listed building . A former garden house with baroque stucco from around 1690 is integrated into the main building. It was built by the town school leader and imperial poet Johann Steuerlein (1546–1613). It was completely plastered at the end of the 18th century. In 1909 the owner of the house exposed the framework again on the initiative of chief building officer Eduard Fritze .
Up until the 19th century, it served as the residence of high-ranking municipal and princely officials such as Georg Baumbach, Georg Christoph Zink, Ernst Ludwig Schröter and Justus Hermann Pfaffenrath von Sonnenfels. Frau von Pfaffenrath got into a quarrel between two ladies-in-waiting and served as the occasion for the Wasung war . A memorial plaque reminds of this. After that there were several changes of ownership (including the Amthor and Ritz families). From 1905 to 1941 it was owned by the haulier Ferdinand Raßmann. Until 1926 he ran a private post office (wage transport for the Reichspost), then a transport and trading business.
In 1982 the “ VEB Denkmalpflege Meiningen” restored the stately building in which it also resided. From 1990 onwards the "Building and Monument Preservation Meiningen" had its seat here. Since October 1st, 2005 it has been operated by the art association "NEKST eV" as an art house. It is the largest art house in Thuringia. The half-timbered house has been owned by the city and let the association use it since 2010.
Art house
The art association NEKST, founded in May 2003 and prepared in 2001 by Timea Zimmer and Marina von Ketteler, has been in the Alte Posthalterei since 2005.
There are changing exhibitions of modern art , especially the fine arts of painting , graphics and sculpture . The exhibiting artists are and were Jana Schwarz, Ralf Klement, Waldemar Rösch, Kerstin Gnauck, Andrea Magnus, Veronika Dutt, Udo Eisenacher, Beate Debus, Jan Polacek, Ferenc Puha, Giulio Barzanella and others from Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Poland , Slovenia, Spain and Italy.
In addition to ongoing exhibitions expositions here find workshops , seminars , thematic tours and regularly recurring event series instead. These include the NEKSTJazz club with concerts and sessions and the NEKST Monday Talk. The NEKST youth gallery continues to work under the roof of the Kunsthaus . The Kunsthaus has the following facilities: studios, rehearsal rooms, guest studio, sculpture park, art library , gallery shop , workshops, recording studio , event rooms , stages and a café / bar.
The sponsor of the Meiningen art house is the art association “NEKST e. V. “(New European Art Salon Thuringia). The Kunsthaus Meiningen is run on a voluntary basis by the association's members, and in 2008 it received funding from the “Fund to Strengthen Civic Engagement for Culture in the New States” of the Federal Cultural Foundation. In 2010 NEKST eV was awarded the “Thuringia Municipal Initiative Prize”.
See also
Half-timbered houses in Meiningen
Web links
- Meiningen Art House
- Video Kunsthaus Meiningen
- Federal cultural foundation through the Meiningen art house
Coordinates: 50 ° 34 ′ 8.4 ″ N , 10 ° 24 ′ 50 ″ E