Cumberland Gallery

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Coordinates: 52 ° 22 ′ 23.8 "  N , 9 ° 44 ′ 35.4"  E

Diagonal view of the Cumberland Gallery

The Cumberlandsche Galerie in Hanover is a building erected by the architect Otto Goetze between 1883 and 1886 in Hanover to house the Duke of Cumberland's painting gallery . It is located in the inner courtyard of the Hanover Theater in the Mitte district and is accessible via Prinzenstrasse. Only the staircase of the original picture gallery is preserved today.

history

Since 1903 in the Cumberland Gallery : “ Fatherland Museum of the City of Hanover . Collection of guild antiquities. ”
Postcard 1 , Series B , Georg Alpers jun. , 1907

The gallery building was created on the basis of the considerations that arose in 1881 to combine the painting collection of King George V of Hanover , the “Hausmann collection” and paintings by older and contemporary painters from Guelph art collections under one roof as an extension of the Museum of Science and Art . Until then, the paintings were distributed in different places and some of them were kept inaccessible.

The client for the construction of the gallery building was Ernst-August zu Braunschweig-Lüneburg as the last Crown Prince of Hanover. Since he also called himself Duke of Cumberland , the building was named after it. The intention of the Crown Prince was to create a prestige object that was to be on a par with the Museum Island in Berlin, which was then Prussian, in order to underline his claims to the throne. The background was the annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover to Prussia in 1866.

Ernst-August commissioned the architect Otto Goetze with the execution , who completed the building after three years of construction. The building made architectural history shortly after its completion and is considered one of the main works of functionalism in the style of the Hanover School of Architecture . Typical of this epoch in the second half of the 19th century are the so-called cast iron architectures , in which the building material cast iron plays a structural role. The style developed during the industrial revolution when cast iron could be mass produced at affordable prices.

While the gallery looks like an industrial building from the outside, it unites numerous eras inside. So let Romanesque (arches), Gothic (light-filled interiors), Baroque (abundant ornamentation) and industrial products of civil engineering (visible iron girders, floor tiles) appear the building as a total work of art. The architecture made it possible for the Crown Prince to present his paintings in the appropriate environment at the time the paintings were created. Contemporary critics found the Cumberlandsche Galerie more light than the Neues Museum in Berlin, for example , whose architecture can be classified as belonging to the period of classicism . Initially, the Cumberlandsche Galerie was part of the museum network as a supplementary building, which was later connected to the brick house built in 1855 by Conrad Wilhelm Hase in Sophienstrasse, which today serves as an artist's house. In 1925 the Duke of Cumberland sold the gallery to the provincial administration of Hanover before it was used to display Nazi propaganda during the Nazi era .

Two intermediate buildings of the Cumberland Gallery from 1863 and 1878 were destroyed in the Second World War during the air raids on Hanover , as was a part of the building facing Prinzenstrasse. There was no damage to the painting collection, as it had already moved to the State Museum , which was built in 1902 .

From 1970 to 1990 the America House in Hanover was located on the ground floor of the Cumberland Gallery.

Todays use

The historic staircase is among other theater of today Schauspielhaus Hannover used

After the air raids in World War II, only the former staircase , which is now a listed building, has been preserved from the former gallery building . It is an opulent building with a three-flight staircase and a choir-like extension with cast-iron supports and wide steps. The stairwell is a listed building .

Today the Cumberlandsche Galerie is mainly used for performances of the Hanover Theater . With a maximum of 80 seats, the gallery is one of five theaters of the playhouse, in which it is architecturally integrated into the playhouse, which opened in 1992, as a rear wing.

The Cumberland Stage was opened in 2009 in the rooms on the upper floor on Prinzenstrasse and, with its 200 seats, offers a venue for contemporary drama, projects and adaptations. Until then, it was only used as a rehearsal stage and now enables performances with a backdrop. A special feature is the variable design of the seats, which offers an unusual view of what is happening. For example, the play "Träumer" (premiered in October 2009) also offered three different theater experiences with three perspectives.

In the stairwell of the gallery only performances take place without a backdrop or stage design, as changes to the listed building are not permitted. Due to the limited number of seats, the gallery offers the possibility of performing smaller theater projects. The play "Nipplejesus" has been performed permanently in the building since 2009. The various levels of the stairwell can be used as required (such as in “The Giraffe's Neck”) and the railing also acted as a stage set in performances (such as in the neo-noir thriller “Bad Dog”). However, the steps also often serve as seats, as is the case with the “Monday bar”, where members of the Schauspielhannover ensemble regularly perform.

In addition to the theater performances, readings, film evenings and party events take place. Every Friday evening the party project "Calamari Moon", founded in 2001, takes place, which enables a weekly club evening with changing DJs in the historic rooms.

literature

Web links

Commons : Cumberland Gallery  - collection of images, videos and audio files