Printing Museum / House for Industrial Culture

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Printing Museum / House for Industrial Culture

The Printing Museum / House for Industrial Culture is the department for type casting, typesetting and printing processes of the Hessian State Museum Darmstadt .

history

The printing museum has been located in the Art Nouveau building at Kirschenallee 88 in Darmstadt, which was formerly known as the “House for Industrial Culture ”, since 1997 . In 1905/06 the factory building for court furniture manufacturer Ludwig Alter was built according to plans by the architect Karl Klee, at that time still with the address Kirschenallee 12. The four-storey concrete skeleton building has a clinker brick facade with concrete parapets with Art Nouveau decor.

Wilhelm Leuschner worked in the factory as a wood sculptor in 1909. During the First World War, equipment for hospitals and hospital trains, transportable aircraft hangars and vehicles for artillery and transport were manufactured in the Ludwig Alter Werke factory. In addition, aircraft, mainly double-decker aircraft, were repaired in a separate department and the A.1 single-seater fighter was developed as an in-house design, which, however, was never used. After the end of the World War, the focus was again on furniture production, but could no longer build on the successes of the pre-war period. In 1921 the company was renamed "Ludwig Alter AG". The company had to initiate liquidation in 1929 and was finally liquidated in 1936. Adam Opel AG acquired the building in 1937 and used it as a spare parts and delivery warehouse from 1939. In 1958 it became the property of Donges Stahlbau GmbH. The association "Haus für Industriekultur eV" bought it in 1991 with financial support from the city of Darmstadt and the state of Hesse. The house was taken over in 2001 as a branch of the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt after the previous sponsor had dissolved in 1999.

The museum's holdings, which the association took over in 1986, largely come from the important type foundry D. Stempel AG, Frankfurt am Main, which ceased operations in 1985.

Exhibition inventory

Information showcases and a functioning rotary printing press for newspaper printing , which was built by MAN Augsburg in 1935, can be found on the ground floor .

The departments for manual typesetting , machine typesetting and printing are located on the first floor .

Handset

In the Handsetzerei demonstrate typesetter manual setting of texts with the angle hooks and individual lead letters from the display case , as it has for Johannes Gutenberg until the invention of typesetting machines in the 19th century was common. The hand-setters can access a considerable number of different fonts in all font sizes and font families from the museum's fund. Most of it comes from the estate of Stempel AG, Frankfurt.

Machine set

The typesetting, casting and setting machines developed since the end of the 19th century are on display in the machine set department. Above all, this includes an extensive collection of various Linotype models constructed by Ottmar Mergenthaler , who emigrated from Germany to the USA . Also on display are a Ludlow line caster , the typographer developed by John Raphael Rogers and especially the Monotype caster and typesetting machine invented by Tolbert Lanston , which, in contrast to the Linotype, casts and typesets individual letters.

Printing presses

In the printing department, numerous ready-to-use printing presses are presented, including one of the first cast iron hand presses, which is called the Stanhope press after its designer, Lord Stanhope . There are also toggle presses , such as the Albion press developed by Richard Whittaker Cope in England, the Columbia or Clymer press and the Washington press from the USA and the Zweibrücker press from Christian Dingler from Germany .

In the case of platen printing presses , various machines based on the Boston , Gally and Liberty systems can be found - developed by J. Golding in Boston . The Liberty platen printing press on display, designed by the German Friedrich Otto Degener, who emigrated to the USA, is the oldest known example in Europe (built around 1860). Furthermore, the models are of Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer developed stop cylinder - Quick Press is issued, a Victoria of Rockstroh & Schneider. If necessary, the machines are still put into operation today for special printing jobs.

workshops

The last type foundry in Germany is located on the 3rd floor , as well as the school printing center, a workshop for lithography (flat printing) and a bookbinding workshop .

Type foundry

The type foundry, who runs the only professional type foundry here in Germany, has around one million matrices available from the museum's inventory for casting letters , which in the non-public magazines on the other floors of the museum in around 8,000 matern boxes and around 3,000 Cardboard boxes are stored.

School printing center

The school printing center, founded in 2007, has set itself the task of keeping artisanal printing alive in schools and other educational institutions. It refers to the French reform pedagogue Celestin Freinet (1896–1966), who introduced printing into pedagogy as a technique of free expression. With the introduction of the computer, this technology has been wrongly forgotten in schools. Because manual setting and printing not only promotes manual and artistic skills in children and young people, but also networked thinking, social interaction, independence and self-confidence. The individual acquires decision-making powers when planning individual procedural steps.

Lithography workshop

In the lithography department, flat printing with lithography stones is shown. The museum has an inventory of around 20,000 lithography stones, which, however, are currently not open to the public due to lack of space.

deals

The museum offers courses and workshops for adults and children.

literature

  • NN: Memorandum for the 50th business anniversary of Ludwig Alter Darmstadt. Printed by LC Wittich´schen Hofbuchdruckerei, Darmstadt 1921.
  • Hannelore Skroblies, Walter Wilkes: The workshops for type casting, typesetting and printing in the "House for Industrial Culture " Darmstadt - interim report June 1995. Darmstadt 1995
  • Walter Wilkes: The Development of the Iron Book Printing Press. 2nd Edition. Teaching print shop of the TH Darmstadt, Darmstadt 1988, ISBN 3-88607-055-7 .
  • Walter Wilkes: high-speed letterpress presses and endless rotary presses of the 19th century. TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt 2004, ISBN 3-88607-152-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Cultural monuments in Hesse. City of Darmstadt. ed. by the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments in Hesse in collaboration with the City of Darmstadt's Magistrate, Braunschweig / Wiesbaden 1994, ISBN 3-528-06249-5 , p. 553
  2. ↑ Ursula Eckstein: August Euler Airfield Darmstadt. Justus von Liebig Verlag Darmstadt 2008, p. 108
  3. ↑ Collection and workshops ( Memento of August 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ House for Industrial Culture

Coordinates: 49 ° 52 ′ 51.4 "  N , 8 ° 38 ′ 10.2"  E