Boffzen Glass Museum

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The Boffzen Glass Museum in the villa of the Becker family of manufacturers

The Boffzen Glass Museum is a museum in Boffzen in Lower Saxony that deals with the history of the local glass industry over the past 150 years since industrialization . It looks in its concept to complement the neighboring Erich-Mäder-glass museum in the open plan , which over the glass making from the Middle Ages to the early modern period in the Hilsregion informed.

Museum history

The glass museum was founded in 1991 under the sponsorship of the municipality of Boffzen. From 2015-2017 it was operated by the Freundeskreis Glasmuseum Boffzen eV . Since 2018, the Glass Museum has been looked after by a new team under the leadership of Deputy Mayor Manfred Bues on a voluntary basis . The museum is financed by the community of Boffzen as well as donations and income.

The Georgshütte , on the left the manufacturer's villa of the Becker family and today's museum headquarters, around 1918.

The museum is housed in the factory owners' villa of the Becker family of glassmakers, whose ancestors had been in glass production since the beginning of the 15th century. In 1872 Ludwig Wilhelm Becker founded the Georgshütte located south of the residential property as a glassworks . The company site has been an industrial wasteland since it was closed in 1989. The museum exhibition is dedicated to the history of the local and national glass industry. Boffzen looks back on a glassmaking tradition of over 500 years, but the exhibition mainly deals with the last 150 years of industrial glass production in the region.

Regional glass history

The museum documents the historical background of the local glassmaking from the first forest glassworks in the 16th century to the local Becker family of glassmakers and the company Noelle + von Campe , which still exists today, using display boards and objects in its permanent exhibition. This includes documents from the life and work of Johann Georg von Langen as a forester, regional planner and business promoter in the region.

The background for the founding of the museum is the local glassmaking with the two glass processing companies in Boffzen, Georgshütte and Noelle + von Campe. The further historical framework is the glass history of the Solling , on whose western slope Boffzen lies. The densely wooded area of ​​the Solling was a favorable location for forest glassworks in earlier centuries , as they relied on large quantities of wood to fire the melting furnaces and to produce potash (forest ash). Based on documentary mentions and soil research, it is assumed that there were more than 20 earlier forest glassworks in Solling since the 9th century, of which no more than 3 to 4 huts existed at the same time. In modern times , stationary glassworks replaced the mobile forest glassworks.

Exhibitions

An exhibition space, 2017
Pressed glass mold for beer mug with replaceable brewery emblem, 2017

The Boffzen Glass Museum primarily exhibits utility and household glass for private household use and for industrial and commercial needs. These include items such as carafes and wine glasses as well as a variety of beer glasses from the 1950s and 1960s. However, there are also artistically painted individual pieces that were made for the glassmaker's own use.

The focus of the exhibition is the industrial production process of pressed glass . But hand-blown objects, bottles and drinking glasses are also part of the exhibition. The process of glass production is documented by tools, molds, devices and machines. Not only industrially produced glass, but also individual artistic pieces such as vases, glasses and club cups are part of the exhibition.

In addition to the permanent exhibition, the museum also organizes special exhibitions on special topics from art, applied arts and industrial history.

In 2015 there was a joint exhibition on Wilhelm Wagenfeld . Glass and porcelain objects from the 1930s in the Boffzen Glass Museum and the Fürstenberg Castle Museum . In 2016, the history of the Noelle + company was presented by Campe on the occasion of the 150th anniversary. In addition, there was an exhibition on the glass artists Louise Lang and Franca Tasch and their two-year worldwide so-called "Weiberwalz". An exhibition on glass from the 1950s in Germany followed in 2017.

At the end of 2017, the exhibits from the Glass Museum were cleared out and returned to facilities in Braunschweig, Cottbus, Weißwasser and Leipzig. Instead, exhibits from the current production of the local glassworks Noelle + von Campe have been on display since 2018.

Expansion and planning

In 2017, plans by the museum became known to give the permanent exhibition a more contemporary format for 90,000 euros. The 150-year history of Boffzen glass production was to be relived through multimedia facilities and tablet computers. The municipal council of Boffzen did not give a firm promise of a necessary funding of the project in the amount of 13,500 euros, whereupon the volunteers at the glass museum announced their withdrawal from museum work.

In 2018 the premises of the museum were renovated by the municipality of Boffzen. It is planned to operate the museum all year round.

See also

Web links

Commons : Glasmuseum Boffzen  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Simone Flörke: Museum documents the history of glass production in Boffzen . In: New Westphalian . August 12, 2016 ( nw.de ).
  2. ↑ Future for the history of glass . In: New Westphalian . September 4, 2017 ( nw.de ).
  3. ↑ Circle of Friends puts an end to the Glass Museum , Daily Anzeiger, September 12, 2017
  4. ↑ a b It continues in the Boffzen Glass Museum . In: Daily Anzeiger Holzminden . Daily Anzeiger Holzminden, August 30, 2017 ( [1] ).
  5. ^ Boffzen Glass Museum. (No longer available online.) Solling-vogler-region.de, archived from the original on September 28, 2017 ; accessed on September 27, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Freundeskreis Glasmuseum Boffzen eV (Ed.): Flyer of the Glasmuseum Boffzen.
  7. ↑ Work on the Glasstelen-Path in Boffzen begins in spring 2018 in Neue Westfälische on November 17, 2017
  8. ↑ Burkhard Battran: Boffzen Glass Museum is to be upgraded . In: New Westphalian . August 18, 2017 ( nw.de ).
  9. ↑ Burkhard Battran: Glass Museum Boffzen: Ehrenämtler withdraw from museum operations . In: New Westphalian . September 12, 2017 ( nw.de ).
  10. ↑ It continues in the Boffzen Glass Museum In: Daily Anzeiger Holzminden from April 24, 2018

Coordinates: 51 ° 45 ′ 14.2 "  N , 9 ° 24 ′ 0.3"  E