Monument Office of the Province of East Prussia
The Monument Authority of the Province of East Prussia , also known at the time as the Provincial Monument Authority , was the monument authority for the Prussian Province of East Prussia, founded in 1893 and based in Königsberg .
The first state curator was Adolf Boetticher . His task was on the one hand the practical preservation of monuments through advice, participation in ordinances and in education as well as the administrative processes z. B. in compensation for owners of listed buildings. On the other hand, he should create an inventory , ie a documentation of monuments and other historical objects for the province of East Prussia. The resulting photographic archive of art and cultural monuments was housed in the Königsberg Castle and was continued until 1943.
After the end of the Second World War, several Russian and Lithuanian, at least one Belarusian and also various Polish expert commissions came to East Prussia to look for art treasures. As a result, some parts of the archive came to the Institute for Art Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw . In 1952 this find was divided between three institutions:
- Institute for Art Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw (Polish: Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk)
- State Archives in Olsztyn (Allenstein) (Polish: Archiwum Państwowe w Olsztynie)
- Museum of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn (Allenstein)
literature
- Arno Surminski: The old East Prussia. Photographs from the Königsberg Monument Office from 1880 to 1943. Hamburg 2008, ISBN 3-8319-0288-7 .