Kiel Collection of Antiquities

View of room IV: Classical art.

View from room VI to room VIII (Classical art of the 4th century BC and Hellenistic art).

The Antikensammlung Kiel is a university teaching collection of the University of Kiel open to the public in the field of classical archeology . The collection presented in the Kunsthalle Kiel is the only one of its kind in the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein and is of international importance, especially because of the Lower Italian ceramics .

History of the collection

The collection established in the first half of the 19th century was linked to the University of Kiel from the start. The initiative for the justification came from Peter Wilhelm Forchhammer , the first academic teacher of archeology at Kiel University. He was supported in this by Otto Jahn . Forchhammer, having traveled widely himself, was convinced that both one's own perception of local conditions and the works of art from antiquity were a prerequisite for understanding antiquity . In his opinion, a museum should serve to awaken the artistic sense in northern Germany . In 1840 he began to raise funds for such a museum and was so successful that as early as 1841, donations from art lovers made the first acquisitions for a not yet existing museum. These pieces, casts of the Parthenon sculptures (“ Elgin Marbles ”), arrived in Kiel a year later. The Danish King Christian VIII - Kiel was still part of the Kingdom of Denmark at that time - left the large room in the chapel of Kiel Castle, which burned out in 1838, to the university to set up a museum of plaster casts . The museum was finally opened there on January 18, 1843. After the collection of the University of Bonn, it was only the second university-archaeological collection in the German-speaking area and the first public art museum in Northern Germany at all.

From the beginning, the museum, although it was formally part of the university and initiated by professors, was a civil city museum that was open to anyone interested. This was thanks to the Schleswig-Holstein Art Association founded in 1843. Christian III donated an annual amount of 300 thalers , which the citizens continued to increase, so that after further acquisitions the museum was opened for the second time on September 5, 1852. In 1887 the castle chapel had to be cleared and the collection had to accept makeshift alternative quarters in the “art barn” at 17 Danish Street. The provisional should last 20 years. Arthur Milchhoefer , Forchhammer's successor, took advantage of this situation and reorganized the collection according to contemporary, “art-historical” criteria. The simple show collection became a walk through the history of art with a focus on teaching the visitor in questions of style. The influence of the university on the collection continued to increase in the period that followed, so that, under the aegis of Eduard Schmidt (professor from 1925 to 1946), it became the real workspace of Kiel archaeologists.

After Lotte Hegewisch left the city on Düsternbrooker Weg with building land in her will, the Kiel Art Gallery was built. The art collection was opened to the public as early as 1909. The listing of the Antikensammlung turned out to be far more problematic. On the one hand, the transport of the large, heavy casts was complicated, and on the other, many of the pieces had to be restored. Thus the collection of antiquities was only opened in December 1921 under the aegis of August Frickenhaus . The art gallery was badly damaged in bombing raids in 1944, and the casts in particular suffered major losses. After the Second World War , it took until June 16, 1960 for the collection to be reopened under the direction of Wilhelm Kraiker . After the Kunsthalle was enlarged in 1986 to include an extension that primarily benefited the art collection, the antique collection, which was reopened on December 14, 1986, was also reorganized. The focus was now - far more on the casts than before - on the originals. This initiated a return to the original goals of Peter Wilhelm Forchhammer and the collection again became more of a public exhibition than, first and foremost, an academic teaching collection.

Glance into room V with the Greek portraits.

At least since 1906, when Ferdinand Noack first acquired antique originals with 37 terracottas, vases and vase fragments in the art trade in Athens, these were also collected. There were mainly geometric vases , as well as Mycenaean ceramics and Corinthian vases . Previously, the Kiel archaeological institute had received 137 duplicates from the Schliemann collection in Berlin in 1895 . Kiel received a wide variety of items, including idols , household items, tools and, above all, vessels. A year later, the Kiel collection from were Antiquarium in Berlin miscellaneous pieces of ancient Egypt , Cyprus, Greece, Etruria and the Roman Empire as a permanent loan passed. By the end of the Second World War, around 500 originals were collected, which Konrad Schauenburg was able to roughly double in number during his time as professor and director of the museum (1968–1990). During the time of Schauenburg, the character of the collection changed from a focus on casts to a collection in which originals and casts are presented as equal and complementary.

View into room IX with the Roman portraits.

Following the practices of the 1980s, there were hardly any purchases made with Schauenburg's successor Bernhard Schmaltz . The collection was expanded primarily through the acquisition of donations, foundations and permanent loans, which include the Jantzen, Reuter and Rheinheimer collections. The original collection today comprises more than 1000 pieces, the cast collection, which was able to close the gaps that had been torn after the Second World War through numerous new acquisitions, such as the Geneleos Group , the Antenor-Kore , the Thermenherrr and Augustus von Primaporta , now comprises around 800 Pieces. They offer a representative overview of the entire sculptural work of antiquity. As is customary with university collections, an attempt was made to collect a representative section of the originals, particularly through the various forms of ancient ceramics from prehistoric times to late antiquity . It was less about outstanding pieces than about exemplary pieces. Nevertheless, antiques of international importance can also be found in the collection today. Due to Konrad Schauenburg's interest in Lower Italian ceramics of the 4th century BC Today the Kiel collection has a focus on this area. The ancient stone sculpture is only rarely represented in the collection and then mostly through small-format, fragmented and more artisanal than particularly artful pieces. An inventory catalog from 2003 lists 43 pieces of various shapes.

A special exhibition was held from December 2015 to January 2016 to mark the 175th anniversary of the Antikensammlung. As part of the exhibition, attempts were made to reconstruct the historical presentation of the collection, for example with vermilion walls and brown plinths, as were common in the 19th century. Elsewhere, “Attic sun and Attic sky” were simulated by a blue background. In addition, 14 of the 40 in the inventory and specially restored casts of works by Bertel Thorvaldsen , including “The Three Graces”, were shown together with the “Elgin Marbles”. As in the early days of the museum, works of classical and classicism are combined in the presentation. In addition, antiques are shown that have never been seen in public or have not been seen since the Second World War.

For more than 175 years since the opening, it has been possible to maintain basic standards that Forchhammer and Jahn had already set: The collection is always open to anyone interested free of charge during its opening hours.

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  Large Apulian red-figure Loutophoros by the painter from MNB 1148 ; around 330 BC Chr.

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  Portrait of Socrates; from a seated statuette from Pergamon .

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  Clazomenic sarcophagus, probably from Klazomenai; around 520 BC Chr.

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  Boeotian polychrome terracotta cock. First half of the 5th century BC Chr.

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  Apulian red-figure patera of the white jacket painter: An arimasp defends himself against a griffin. About 340/10 BC Chr.

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  Bird between tendrils on a so-called pilgrim's bottle in the Gnathia style

Special exhibitions

The permanent exhibition is complemented by special exhibitions, which are generally shown in the premises of the permanent exhibition.

• 1986: Gods and heroes on Greek vases. Originals from the Kiel collection of antiquities in the citizens' gallery of the Kiel savings and lending bank
• 1991: Socrates in Greek visual art
• 1994: ΙΔΕΑΙ. Contours of the Greek image of man
• 1997: Ancient Body Shapes. Graphic work by Donald von Frankenberg
• 1998: Gifts of the Muses. The "Aristaios" collection by Giuseppe Sinopoli . An exhibition by the Antikensammlung and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival
• 1998: Samos . The Kassel excavation in 1894 in the necropolis of the archaic city
• 1999: Alašia - Kupirijo - Kypros . Evidence of early cultures from Cyprus
• 2000: Treasures of antiquity. Art and craft of the Etruscans and Romans (from the Berlin Collection of Antiquities)
• 2002: LIVIA AVGVSTA . Portraits of the wife of the Emperor Augustus
• 2003: NATURA LAPIDUM - working with antique marbles
• 2004: The ancient mosaics of Ravenna
• 2004: water for the emperor
• 2005: The Greeks and the Sea - The fish plates from the Florence Gottet Collection
• 2006: L'antica maniera . Drawings and gems by Giovanni Calandrelli . An exhibition by the Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, as part of the federal program of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
• 2007: Sicans - Greeks - Sikeliots. Ancient ceramics from the necropolis of central Sicily
• 2008: Greeks - Scythians - Amazons
• 2009: Ancient forms and colors in the reconstruction
• 2009: Priene - everyday life and festival in a Greek city
• 2010: ANTIK & added: "Una Baccante antica"
• 2011: Kerameia - masterpieces of Apulian pottery art
• 2011: Animals in antiquity - picture and image
• 2012: The archaeologist Ulf Jantzen (1909–2000)
• 2013: Manipulated landscapes 10,000 years of change (exhibition of the graduate school "Human Development in Landscapes" of the Christian Albrechts University)
• 2014: Antique & supplemented. Roman portrait busts from the Dresden Sculpture Collection
• 2015: 175 years of the art museum
• 2017: Of Beauty & Size - Roman Portraits and their Baroque Appropriation (in cooperation with the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden )
• 2019: Antiquity in print - between imagination and empiricism

Directors

The office of director is traditionally linked to holding the chair for classical archeology.

• 1842–1894: Peter Wilhelm Forchhammer
• 1895–1903: Arthur Milchhoefer
• 1904–1907: Ferdinand Noack
• 1909–1919: Bruno Sauer
• 1920–1925: August Frickenhaus
• 1925–1946: Eduard Schmidt
• 1946–1947: Roland Hampe
• 1948–1968: Wilhelm Kraiker
• 1968–1990: Konrad Schauenburg
• 1990-2006: Bernhard Schmaltz
• 2007–2010: Frank Rumscheid
• since 2012: Annette Haug

Curators

• 1985-2017: Joachim Raeder
• Since 2017: Manuel Flecker

exhibition

The Antikensammlung is currently set up in nine rooms in the basement of the Kunsthalle. They are located away from the exhibition rooms of the art collection and, unlike these, can be visited free of charge. The rooms form a continuous chronological tour, only rooms V and IX are separate and show Greek and Roman portraits, especially in casts. The first two rooms show prehistoric works as well as works of archaic art . Rooms III and IV show works of classical art from the 5th century, including casts of the Parthenon sculptures, and room VI shows works of classical art from the 4th century. In rooms VII and VIII pieces from the Hellenistic period are shown.

literature

• Joachim Raeder and colleagues: Collection of antiques in the Kunsthalle zu Kiel. (= Westermann's museum), Magazinpresse, Munich 1987.
• Series of publications of the Antikensammlung Kiel:
  • Bernhard Schmaltz (Ed.): ΙΔΕΑΙ. Contours of the Greek image of man. For the 150th anniversary of the Kiel Collection of Antiquities. Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Kiel 1994.
  • Bernhard Schmaltz (Ed.): Exempla. Guiding principles for ancient art. Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Kiel 1996.
  • Bernhard Schmaltz (Ed.): Natura lapidum. Ancient stone sculptures. Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Kiel 2003.
  • Konrad Hitzl (Ed.): Kerameia. A masterpiece of Apulian pottery art. Studies dedicated to the memory of Konrad Schauenburg. Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Kiel 2011.
• Brigitte Freyer-Schauenburg : Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum Germany 55, Kiel 1. CH Beck, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-406-32830-X .
• Mathias Prange : Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum Germany 64, Kiel 1. CH Beck, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-406-37105-1 .
• Annette Haug : 175 years of the art museum with a directory of the casts and replicas in the antique collection - Kunsthalle zu Kiel.

Web links

Commons : Antikensammlung Kiel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Homepage of the Antikensammlung Kiel
• Description of individual pieces in the museum portal "Museen Nord"

Remarks

1. ↑ according to the antique collection in the Kunsthalle zu Kiel. , P. 13: 77 vases
2. ↑ Bernhard Schmaltz (Ed.): Natura lapidum. Ancient stone sculptures. Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Kiel 2003
3. ↑ Antiquities as fresh as a dew: 175 years of the art museum ; Press release from the University of Kiel