Winterthur Trade Museum
The Gewerbemuseum Winterthur is a museum in Winterthur . The museum deals with a wide range of topics from everyday culture to light and design to industrial production and also houses the Kellenberger watch collection . The museum is listed by the federal government in the KGS inventory as a B object and is a regional monument.
According to the company, it is the last museum of its kind in Switzerland .
history
The museum located in Winterthur's old town has its origins in the 1870s, when similar museums were founded in other European countries. A conference of eastern Swiss cantons called in February 1874 chose Winterthur as a suitable location for such a museum because of the technical center that had just opened there . As a result, the city of Zurich applied to the Zurich government council for the establishment of such a museum, with reference to its status as the canton capital. Since the government council did not make a decision for a long time, the Winterthur city council decided independently to set up such a museum in August 1874; this decision was confirmed by the political community on October 4, 1874. In response to the Winterthur Vedikt, the city of Zurich also independently planned the opening of a museum of applied arts (today's Museum of Design Zurich ), which from then on competed with its counterpart in Winterthur.
In 1875 the trade museum was finally opened at its first location in the old granary of the city of Winterthur at the Untertor. The museum initially comprised a reading room and an exhibition space. The first director of the museum was Johann Jakob Schäppi , who resigned this post when he took over the management of SLM in 1877. His successor was A. Gohl, an Aargau chemist, who, however, had to leave after two years in 1879 due to an austerity measure. His function was initially taken over by the municipal supervisory commission.
In the same year, the trade museum changed its location for the first time, it was now located in an extension of the technical center and was actively used by the students there. It was not until 1886 that the architect Albert Pfister appointed a new director for the museum. Already at this time, the museum's collection could be divided into two main directions: On the one hand, the arts and crafts with textile, metal, ceramic, wood and leather goods, and the mechanical-technical collections, which deal more with newer technical achievements such as machines and electricity busy and was therefore also interesting for the technical center. The metalworking school in Winterthur was founded in Winterthur in 1889, and Albert Pfister was also the director - as a result, the school worked closely with the trade museum. Over the years, the collection of the industrial museum grew and space in the technical center became scarce. In 1911, the commercial library and reading room were therefore moved to Eggsche Gut at Technikumstrasse 7. In 1920 Albert Pfister resigned as director of the museum after 36 years.
Two years after the resignation of the long-time director Pfister, the trade museum had to vacate its location in the extension of the technical center and the space problem that was otherwise already present became acute. With this change, architect Alfred Altherr sen. (1875–1945) took on his new post as director, who was also in charge of the Zurich Museum of Applied Arts. With B. Wydler he was given a new head for the mechanical part, who as head of the metalworkers school in Winterthur, like Albert Pfister, was able to use synergies between the school and the museum. In the years that followed, the museum had only two classrooms available as a temporary facility, and a large part of the arts and crafts collection was withdrawn or inventoried. Only the mechanical-technical collection could remain at the technical center until it too had to leave the technical center in 1930, as the university only wanted to exhibit “modern” machines in the future.
The solution to the problem of space only came a few years after the notice was given, when the girls' school no longer needed its school premises on the church square and the trade museum was able to open its current location on September 22, 1928. At the same time, the location at Eggschen Gut (demolished in 1937) was also canceled. Altherr was in office at the new location in Winterthur for a total of 10 years until he had to vacate his post due to health problems. After Altherr's resignation, the trade museum again had no director until 1954 during the Second World War. It was not until 1955 that Alfred Altherr jun. (1911–1972), the son of the previous director and former volunteer at Le Corbusier's architecture office in Paris, hired a new director. Under him, a housing advice center was set up at the trade museum. Alfred Altherr junior was followed in 1962 by the graphic artist Hans Neuburg, who, however, had to vacate the position at the end of 1964. This was followed by the next period of the museum without a director, the exhibitions were designed by changing experts and by caretaker Fritz Hobi, the trained carpenter was promoted to exhibition and collection manager on May 1, 1974 due to his achievements. In 1978 the museum had over 30,000 visitors with an operating budget of 65,000 francs.
The machines in the technical collection, for which there was no space in the trade museum, were handed over to the newly opened Technorama in 1982 , where they fit perfectly into the exhibition concept. The museum concept of the Gewerbemuseum was last revised in 1990. Since 1999, after a renovation, the previously independent Kellenberger clock collection has been integrated into the museum, the museum's exhibition area today is 1000 m² and the museum shows regular changing exhibitions.
building
At the site of the old armory, the current building was erected as a girls' high school in 1849–1850, after the same institution for boys had been in operation since 1842 in what is now the Oskar Reinhart Museum . The two-winged building by the architect Ferdinand Stadler has a cuboid on the ground floor and a flat hipped roof .
literature
- May B. Broda: 50 years of the Winterthur Commercial Museum on Kirchplatz 1928–1978 . Ed .: City of Winterthur. 1978.
Web links
- Official website of the Gewerbemuseum
- Gewerbemuseum am Kirchplatz im Winterthur Glossary.
Individual evidence
- ↑ KGS inventory of B properties in the canton of Zurich, status 1.1.2017. Federal Office for Civil Protection , January 1, 2017, accessed on February 15, 2017 (No direct link to PDF, as the name of this was provisional at the time of the entry.).
Coordinates: 47 ° 29 '57.2 " N , 8 ° 43' 46.1" E ; CH1903: six hundred ninety-seven thousand two hundred fifty-nine / 261,742