Old Town Hall - Municipal Gallery for Modern Art

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Old Town Hall - Municipal Gallery for Modern Art
Old town hall on the market, Wittlich.jpg
Old town hall on the market
Data
place Wittlich
Art
modern art
opening 1994
Website
ISIL DE-MUS-440017

The old town hall - municipal gallery for modern art , previously Georg-Meistermann-Museum , in the district town of Wittlich ( Rhineland-Palatinate ) houses a large part of the estate of the artist Georg Meistermann . A selection of the artist's life's work is traced with exhibits in the Wittlich Collection. On display are graphics, drawings, original window designs on a scale of 1: 1 as well as glass and oil paintings, including the art-historically valuable window "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" from 1954. In Wittlich there are still 40 glass windows by Georg Meistermann in eleven buildings, including the Parish Church of St. Mark , can be seen. National and international art is presented in exhibitions in the museum.

history

The first efforts to found the Georg Meistermann Museum in Wittlich go back to 1984, when the first exhibition of Meistermann's works was shown in the building that had previously been used as the town hall. In the period that followed, the incumbent mayor Helmut Hagedorn and Georg Meistermann, who felt very close to the city due to his early Wittlich glasswork, came up with a concept for a future Georg Meistermann Museum. In addition to a permanent collection of Meistermann works, this provided for a continuous series of temporary exhibitions on contemporary art. Since the intended donation could not be completed before the death of Georg Meistermann, the widow Edeltrud Meistermann and the grandson and art historian Justinus Maria Calleen put it together. The entire artistic development should be expressed in the four genres of graphics, drawing, painting and glass.

With the donation, the Georg Meistermann Museum was founded in 1994. Even in the founding phase, it was clear that in future a museum director would also be needed for the scientific supervision of the Meistermann collection. This should also look after the synagogue, the cultural, conference and memorial site as well as general cultural work. In 2000, after a public invitation to tender, Meistermann expert Justinus Maria Calleen was hired as the Meistermann Museum Director and Head of the Cultural Office and the Wittlich Synagogue for Culture and Memorial. In this function, he supported the motion of a citizens' initiative in 2009 to lay stumbling blocks in memory of victims of National Socialism by the internationally active Cologne artist Gunther Demnig. This application was rejected by the city council.

In addition to the research and presentation of the Meistermann collection, three changing exhibitions on modern and contemporary art were shown each year. The exhibition concept can be divided into four categories. On the one hand, prominent artists from the region were presented. B. Cordula Herx, 2000 or Jürgen Waxweiler, 2006. On the other hand, new positions in contemporary art in Germany played a role e.g. B. Ren Rong , 2006 or Brigitte Weimer, 2007 and Uwe Jonas , 2009. A third category were internationally known artists who could be put into a dialogue with Georg Meistermann (e.g. Horst Antes , 2000 or Alfred Hrdlicka , 2008) . Furthermore, the international photography u. a. as in 2007 with August Sander or 2008 Jürgen Schadenberg in a special annual series.

A major concern was the establishment of a museum education geared towards children and young people in order to establish the museum as an extracurricular place of education. This was done in cooperation with the local educational institutions, schools and kindergartens. In addition to guided tours through the exhibitions, children and youth art projects were developed, the results of which were then presented in the museum. The museum was supported in its cultural work by a circle of friends and sponsors named after a picture of Meistermann.

The constant presence of the Georg Meistermann Museum in the press and in public meant that the museum enjoyed great success in the following four and a half years. Mayor Bußmer paid tribute to its supraregional importance for its tenth anniversary, "which has a high impact and advertising power". In the festive event in Naumburg Cathedral on August 27, 2010, in which the painter Neo Rauch also received the 2010 Foundation Prize, “the Bible and Culture Foundation honored the long-time director of the Georg Meistermann Museum in Wittlich, Dr. Justinus Maria Calleen, for the care and mediation of Georg Meistermann's legacy, ”was the official rationale of the jury. At the same time, the "life's work of Dr. Justinus Maria Calleen honored ”. The in-house press release (author Ralf Thomas Müller, May 27, 2010) said: “In the dispute about the character and exhibition policy of the museum, Calleen emphasized Meistermann's legacy as a critical artist and intellectual who was particularly in opposition to National Socialism for a humane society fought. "

In 2007, the city council submitted a five-year exhibition plan to the director of the cultural department and museum director Calleen. This unusual measure envisaged an anniversary exhibition of the sculptor Hanns Scherl for the 100th birthday in 2010 and one for the 100th birthday of Georg Meistermann in 2011. This would have given both artists the same honor. In view of the different qualities of the works of art and the contrasting biographies, the museum director pointed out the impossibility of this project and refused to hold the Hanns Scherl exhibition. Georg Meistermann, the namesake of the museum, was critical of the National Socialist regime and was banned from practicing his profession by the rulers. Hanns Scherl, on the other hand, was committed to the National Socialist art doctrine in his art and has never distanced himself from his earlier conception of art in later times. In his report, the Cologne art historian Norbert Küpper, among others, clearly demonstrated the strong formal and content-wise reference to the National Socialist imagery in all of Hanns Scherl's work. In this report, however, it is pointed out that the quality of Hanns Scherl's sculpting would not be sufficient for any museum exhibition. Thus, from the point of view of the critics, such an exhibition would not only have endangered Georg Meistermann's honor, but also museum work. The museum directors Ahrens from Trier and Jessewitsch from Solingen also advised against this exhibition. The city council of the CDU, FDP and Free Voting Community canceled the position of the head of the cultural office in 2009 and then dismissed the art historian Calleen. The city administration decided to have the Hanns Scherl exhibition carried out by the journalist Eva-Maria Reuther, who also reported on the preparations for the exhibition in the Trierisches Volksfreund . The Meistermanns community of heirs decided to reclaim the naming rights. The city council then gave up the naming rights to avoid a legal dispute. It was decided to rename the museum in "Old Town Hall - Municipal Gallery for Modern Art". After Calleen's release, the collection, which the psychoanalyst Ms. Edeltrud Meistermann-Seeger donated to the city, is without scientific supervision. Since 2015 the addition "modern art" has been dispensed with. From now on, the exhibition site operates under the name of "Städtische Galerie im Alten Rathaus" (City Gallery in the Old Town Hall). This is also reflected in the exhibition concept, in which modern art plays a subordinate role alongside general cultural topics such as Pest, Himmerod Monastery or the Vulkaneifel. No reference is made to the Georg Meistermann donation, which was essential for the special exhibitions before 2010.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Münster special edition, 3/1995
  2. ↑ Tatjana Wagner: Steiniger Weg zu Stolpersteinen - About a difficult chapter in dealing with memory in Wittlich. SWR2 Journal at noon, February 21, 2014, 12:33 pm, to listen in [1] or as a copy [2] (for laying the first stumbling block in Wittlich)
  3. ↑ Mysterious world. Trierischer Volksfreund, April 10, 2007.
  4. ↑ The Liberation of the Stone. Trierischer Volksfreund, 7./8. March 2009.
  5. ↑ Trierischer Volksfreund: I want to show life as it is. 4th / 5th October 2008.
  6. ↑ Trierischer Volksfreund: A place where children feel comfortable. June 6, 2001. How little kids become artists. May 12, 2003. In the footsteps of Meistermann. 6./7. December 2008.
  7. ↑ The floating point e. V. (association website)
  8. ↑ Cultural lighthouse of the region. Trierischer Volksfreund, April 14, 2004
  9. ↑ Norbert Küpper: The folksy complete works of Hanns Scherl in the style and spirit of the National Socialist ideal world art ideology. (PDF) The floating point e. V., April 21, 2010, accessed on April 21, 2015 (report on the work of Hanns Scherl). , s. a .: The Scherl Files - About the absurd collective denial of the Nazi past of a local native artist and the resulting injunction . On the 25th anniversary of Georg Meistermann's death on June 12, 2015, Küpper was awarded the "alternative Georg Meistermann Prize" by the sculptor and Meistermann's son-in-law Heribert Calleen through the original artist's copy of the Georg Meistermann plaque he created “For his educational work about the nationalist artist Hanns Scherl and his 'biographical NS denials' in the city of Wittlich ...”, see Kunstforum International 9/2015, art prizes: Georg-Meistermann-Plakette
  10. ↑ Trierischer Volksfreund: Either way - the family doesn't want a Meistermann Museum. 17./18. April 2010.
  11. ↑ City avoids name dispute. Trierischer Volksfreund, April 28, 2010.
  12. ↑ Ursula Knorr, Norbert Küpper, Thomas Schnitzler: An unnecessary discussion of the past ... triggered by a small clique - the end of the Georg-Meistermann-Museum because of the denial of the National Socialist entanglements of the artist and the art of Hanns Scherl on the part of the city of Wittlich. In: JM Calleen, R. Jessewitsch (ed.): The life of man is wrapped in color - Georg Meistermann on the hundredth birthday. Berlin 2011; see also Georg-Meistermann-Gesellschaft - Critical Forum for Art, Culture and Questions of Time e. V.
  13. ↑ Eileen Blädel: The high art of arguing. In: volksfreund.de. Trierischer Volksfreund, July 19, 2013, accessed on April 27, 2015 .
  14. ↑ Norbert Küpper: Like a thorn in the flesh - Georg Meistermann is ostracized in Wittlich. In: Controversy. Else-Lasker-Schüler-Gesellschaft e. V., 2015, accessed on April 27, 2015 (The arbitrary and denial relationship between the city of Wittlich and the person and work of the artist Georg Meistermann).
  15. ^ Wealth through poverty - archive exhibitions - exhibitions - cultural sectors - Wittlich cultural office. Retrieved June 21, 2018 .

Coordinates: 49 ° 59 ′ 10.1 ″  N , 6 ° 53 ′ 14.8 ″  E