Castan's Panopticum

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Building of the Hacker-Pschorr brewery with Castan's Panopticum advertising
Castan's Panopticum in the Pschorr brewery building (left). Center: Passage-Panoptikum in the Kaisergalerie , around 1900
Sketches of exhibited groups including the Princely Hall and Chamber of Terror

Castan's Panopticum was a Berlin wax museum (see also Ceroplastik ). The owners of the Panoptikum , which was comparable to Madame Tussaud and existed from 1869 to 1922, were the brothers Louis (1828–1908) and Gustave Castan (1836–1899). In addition to the main business in Berlin, there were branches in Cologne , Frankfurt am Main , Dresden , Breslau and Brussels . The Panoptiken Castans were among the most famous wax museum in Germany.

history

Castan's Panoptikum opened in Berlin in 1869 as Germany's first wax museum . It established itself in Berlin at the beginning of the 1870s on Schlossplatz in the so-called "Red Castle" on the Stechbahn . However, a fire destroyed these exhibition rooms in 1872, so the brothers looked for another location and moved their exhibition to the newly opened Kaisergalerie in Berlin's Friedrichstrasse in 1873 .

In the 1880s, the institute had grown to such an extent that it had to move again in 1888. In the newly built building of the Munich Pschorr brewery opposite (Friedrichstrasse 165 and Behrenstrasse ), Castan's establishment was able to spread over four floors. There it made the opposite, opened by a newly formed company, Passage panopticon in Kaisergalerie competition.

As was generally the case at this time, Castan's panopticon primarily satisfied the simple curiosity of his visitors. Significant figures from history, medical "monstrosities" and members of foreign peoples were exhibited. The move to the Pschorr-Haus gave the occasion to review the development and importance as well as the current range of the Panoptikum again in 1890 in issue 20 of the periodical “Das Buch für Alle” (published from 1866 to 1935 by the publishers Schönlein, Schönlein's Nachf. And Union) to explain in detail:

“.... and bought several very interesting collections. The large golden Rococo cupboard with relics of Frederick the Great, the Sedan collection with the complete original Napoleon III dinner service, numerous weapons from the Franco-German war, the important Goethe collection, Napoleon's I coronation car and many others were awarded to the whole -Exhibition new stimulus. "

“But the sculptural works also increased steadily from year to year: the gallery of famous and interesting people was enriched more and more and kept pace with the events. The year 1878 brought in Castan's Panopticum one of the greatest groups, representing the statesmen assembled at the Berlin Congress; this was followed by a smaller plastic-decorative picture: "Auerbach's cellar", while in the chamber of horrors, after the acquisition of the Hausacker Museum, which was previously exhibited in the Heidelberg Castle, the entire highly embarrassing jurisdiction of the Middle Ages was demonstrated with instruments of torture and execution. "

“At Christmas time there were peculiar, original Christmas exhibitions, and these were repeatedly replaced by presentations by representatives of foreign peoples, Austral-Negroes, Indians, etc. The Castan brothers also did a particularly lucky move when, after multiple experiments, they opted for an optical illusion System of mirrors based "illusions" - first the "Galathea" and then the "Magneta" - invented, which have an extraordinarily surprising effect on the audience. "

With the emerging cinema boom , general interest in the wax figure exhibition waned to such an extent that the exhibition finally had to be closed in 1922.

exhibition

The main showpieces of the Panoptikum were the famous and interesting personalities in the good or bad sense, which the sculptor Gustave Castan immortalized in wax. The life-size figures were often exhibited as part of scenes such as the parliamentary soirée shown in Figure 1 . The current background in this case was the visit that the center leader Ludwig Windthorst had made to Prince Bismarck in the last days of his office and which had received great attention. Well-known statesmen and parliamentarians have also formed discussion groups in the background.

The wax figures of honorable personalities were often not far from mass murderers such as Jack the Ripper . Another well-known figure from criminal history is Karl Ludwig Sand , the radical German fraternity and murderer August von Kotzebues , who was executed with the sword in Mannheim on May 20, 1820 . Castan's Panoptikum showed several "relics" of him:

“In addition to the obligatory lock, among other things“ a piece of wood from the scaffold on which he was executed ”,“ a glass from which he made the last drink before his execution ”,“ his breloque ( curling ) with a seal , which he made the day before His execution gave his jailer Kloster, from whose son the Castan brothers bought the same, "as well as" a piece of wood from his coffin "."

- Guide through Castan's Panoptikum 1899, p. 49

Further development

In 1972 the Panoptikum was reopened in the shop-in-shop shopping center on Joachimstaler Straße / Ku᾽damm-Eck. The figures from the wax figure collection of around 200 objects were brought back by a German entrepreneur in 1960. In 1996 the exhibition in the new Berlin Panoptikum was closed due to construction work and reopened on May 11, 2013 under the name Panoptikum Mannheim on the 3rd floor of the Mannheim town hall . The Mannheimer Panoptikum was closed on May 31, 2014 due to rent debts. The historical waxes and plasters were then sold and the collection as a whole was lost to the public and academia.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Panoptikum in Mannheim. (No longer available online.) Moulagen.de, archived from the original on June 2, 2017 ; accessed on September 15, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.moulagen.de
  2. ↑ Former Berlin wax museum moves to Mannheim. neckar-chronik.de, August 14, 2012, accessed on September 15, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Berlin Panoptikum - Castan's Panopticum. Central and State Library Berlin, accessed on September 15, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Harald Berlinghof: Mannheimer Panoptikum: Loriot has to pack his suitcase. Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung , June 6, 2014, accessed on September 15, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Angelika Friederici: Castan's Panopticum. castans-panopticum.de, accessed on September 15, 2017 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 55.2 ″  N , 13 ° 23 ′ 19.1 ″  E