Collections and art holdings of the TU Dresden

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The extensive artistic and technical collections of the Dresden University are called collections and art holdings of the Technical University of Dresden .

In total, the approximately 40 individual collections contain around a million objects, from machines to dried plants to paintings . The custody of the Technical University has the task of preserving the holdings, making an inventory and presenting them in exhibitions .

Collections

Mathematical and natural science collections

The largest main group are the mathematical and scientific collections.

Herbarium Dresdense

The botanical collection alone , the so-called Herbarium Dresdense with the internationally used acronym "DR.", Comprises 350,000 plant specimens from all continents and systematic groups. The focus of the collection is Europe . It is divided into the "Herbarium generale" and the "Herbarium Cohrs" with documents of flowering plants collected worldwide, the "Herbarium saxonicum" with specimen copies of flowering plants from Saxony and the " Cryptogam Herbarium", which is made from preparations of algae , fungi , Consists of mosses and lichen . The collection also contains evidence in the form of cross-sections of wood , seeds , fruits and pollen . It complements the exhibition of living plants in the Dresden Botanical Garden . Some of the objects are in the botanical collections of the Technical University of Dresden in the rural palace in Beimendorf in Pirna .

Geological collection

The geological collection with its seven sub-collections comprises more than 30,000 objects . The largest of these is the Systematic Mineral Collection consisting of 15,500 pieces . Further parts are the petrographic , the stratigraphic and the thin section collections, the collections of rocks from Saxony and the building materials as well as the teaching collection . The Geological Collection of the Technical University is the second largest of its kind in Dresden after that of the Museum of Mineralogy and Geology .

Chemistry collections

View into the historical dye collection of the TU Dresden

There are two collections side by side in the chemistry department . One is the Inorganic Chemistry Collection . It contains more than 1000 chemical substances and over 200 laboratory devices and is divided into a teaching collection and a display collection . The other is the historical dye collection of the TU Dresden . It consists of 8000 trade samples of tar dyes in original containers from 80 different manufacturers and also includes 500 natural dyes , 800 sample books and cards as well as many fiber materials . The furnishings in the historical exhibition and storage rooms date back to 1926.

Hermann Krone Collection

The Hermann Krone collection was handed over to the TU Dresden by its namesake in 1907 and contains, among other things, 141 teaching panels from the "Historical Teaching Museum for Photography". The core of the collection are 10 panels with around 120 daguerreotypes and various cameras .

Collection of color theory

In addition to the dye and Hermann Krone S, under construction since 2005. a third collection on the subject of light and color . This is the color theory collection , which preserves time, material and personal testimonies of historical developments in this interdisciplinary field in central Germany and brings them together for teaching and research purposes.

additional

Model collections are the Cartographic Relief Collection , which contains scale plaster models of landscape formations, as well as the Mathematical Models collection with around 400 objects for descriptive and analytical geometry made from wood, plaster, cardboard , metals or silk .

Technical collections

The technical collections are extremely diverse. At the Faculty of Electrical Engineering , for example, there are collections of low-voltage and precision equipment and historical electrical machines . The former contains more than 2000 objects, including measuring devices , electron tubes , microphones and switches . The second collection consists of around 70 electrical machines and a few cutaway models, including alternating , direct and three-phase machines .

The Institute for Production Technology at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering also maintains two collections . The mechanical-technological collection consists of over 500 semi-finished products , machine models and work equipment . In contrast, about 60 length measuring devices , for example coordinate measuring machines , are the subject of the length metrology collection . Further collections at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering are the gearbox model collection with its 200 movable gearbox models made of wood, glass or Plexiglas and the agricultural engineering collection . This includes 34 measuring devices and test facilities as well as several tractors built in the 1960s or before .

Measuring instruments are also an essential part of the hydrological collection and the astronomical - geodetic collection . Further technical collections are the collection of historical medical technology from the former MedAk , the collection of historical calculating machines with 145 objects, including the automatic machines D1 to D4a developed in Dresden , and the collection of combustion engines and vehicle technology .

Other collections

The architecture collection was founded in 1897 by Cornelius Gurlitt and today contains plans and drawings of around 1000 buildings, mainly in Saxony. They come from students or well-known Dresden architects who worked at the TU Dresden and its predecessors, and are mostly unique . The drawings are supplemented by city and cadastral plans .

The forest collections are located at the forest science institute of the TU Dresden in Tharandt . They are divided into a forest botanical collection , the forest measuring device collection with 153 objects for measuring trees and a forest zoological collection . The latter consists, among other things, of many animal preparations as well as 300 pieces of typical damage to the forest caused by them .

The self-contained, self-contained collections called Forestry and Hunting Science Teaching Show of the TU Dresden, specializing in forest sciences Tharandt, and most recently the so-called Museum of the Forest , have been on permanent loan from the Academy of the Saxon State Foundation for Nature and Environment in Grillenburg and Tharandt since 2004 . They include six separate collections with a total of more than 1,500 objects: weapons collection , Forestry equipment collection , forest effect collection , stuffed animals collection , Trophy , Cotta room and Miscellaneous . The exhibition venue has been the Grillenburg hunting lodge in the Tharandt Forest since 1966 .

Further collections are kept in the university archive of the Technical University of Dresden .

Art possession

The possession of works of fine art is divided into five groups and comprises over 3000 objects of a wide range. These include sculptures , paintings , watercolors , gouaches , drawings and graphics . Only the old art collection dates from before the Second World War . There are around 150 works that were not affected by the destruction as a result of the air raids on Dresden in 1945 or subsequent looting, including busts , lithographs and copperplate engravings .

The four other groups of holdings stand out from the old art holdings in the fact that most of them were set up as planned from 1952 to beautify the rooms and buildings of the university with works of art. Half of the art collection now serves this purpose. A distinction must first be made between building-related art and movable works of art . The first group is installed in public space, i.e. mostly on or in buildings, and consists of around 90 wall paintings , reliefs , monumental sculptures and the like. In contrast, the other group, as its name suggests, is not tied to one place. It comprises around 2,000 works from the fields of painting, graphics and small sculptures, which were specifically acquired as new acquisitions or as transfer of ownership or foundation , for example through the Nerlich Foundation.

The other two groups in the art fund of the TU Dresden are the commissioned works and the so-called art collection of the hospital . The latter represents a collection of movable works of all kinds that were collected from the founding of the Carl Gustav Carus Medical Academy in 1954 until it joined the Technical University as a medical faculty in October 1993. At the Institute for the History of Medicine is the graphic collection "Art in Medicine - Medicine in Art", which was mainly acquired from graphics on the subject of medicine. The group of commissioned works consists essentially of portraits of important scientists and rectors of the TU.

Locations and exhibitions

The collections of the TU Dresden are housed in many different locations on the TU campus. Other Dresden museums in the area include the Münchner Platz memorial and the SLUB book museum .

Permanent exhibition

A permanent exhibition on the history of this university was set up in the so-called Zellescher Weg office building in 2003 on the occasion of the 175th anniversary of the Dresden University of Technology. The objects on display, including some technical devices, are now in many cases of high museum value.

University collections art + technology

Görges building of the TU Dresden

Also in 2003, changing exhibitions in the "Altanagalerie" in the Görges building were created under the name of the University Collections Art + Technology . In the first years of its existence, seven highly regarded exhibitions attracted over 100,000 visitors. In addition to contemporary art, there were also exhibits from the history of technology .

Museum of the Forest

The exhibition of the collections described in the “Other collections” section in the Museum des Waldes took place in the Grillenburg hunting lodge in the Tharandt Forest , about 20 kilometers southwest of Dresden. It goes back to the forestry and hunting history teaching show set up at this location in 1953-66 and provided information on forestry and hunting in Germany on over 500 square meters of exhibition space . A total of around 500 exhibits were on view, including equipment used for this purpose, as well as preparations and images. Among other things, around 100 hunting weapons from four centuries were found, from crossbows to shotguns to cold weapons , and animal traps typical for poachers . It also included a unique Saxon collection of forest uniforms, devices for extracting tree sap and other forestry equipment . Parts of the family estate of the founder of the Heinrich Cotta forestry school, who died in neighboring Tharandt , nowadays the forest science department of the TU Dresden, were in the so-called Cotta room . The collection operations were transferred to the Academy of the Saxon State Foundation for Nature and Environment in 2004 . The collections have been outsourced since 2008, as the castle is being reconstructed and, according to the decision of the Saxon cabinet on January 25, 2011, is to become the seat of the Saxon State Foundation for Nature and Environment.

history

The history of the individual collections was very different from one another. Some of them go directly back to the collection instinct of 19th century scientists. For example, the basis for the transmission model collection was laid by Johann Andreas Schubert as early as 1830 . Other collections founded in the 19th century are the dye and geological collections as well as the collections of electrical and calculating machines and astronomical measuring instruments. The first Saxon King Friedrich August I founded the Botanical Collection at the beginning of the 19th century . Natural History Museum to the then Kgl. Polytechnic passed.

The individual collections were originally created for teaching purposes. However, many of the collected teaching materials quickly became obsolete due to the rapid technical progress and were then often stored for several decades. Some of them were irretrievably lost in the Second World War . Only then did interest in the objects begin to rise, whose museum value was recognized. A custody was set up in 1979 to preserve it and make it scientifically accessible . Comprehensive permanent exhibitions of individual parts of the collection were not designed until after 2000.

literature

  • Rector of the Technical University of Dresden (Ed.): Collections and art holdings of the TU Dresden . Dresden 1996.
  • Rector of the Technical University of Dresden (ed.): Buildings and names. Technical University of Dresden . 2. revised Edition Dresden 1997.
  • Dietrich Conrad, Thomas Hänseroth , Klaus Mauersberger (eds.): Johann Andreas Schubert. Catalog of an exhibition in the Dresden Transport Museum on the occasion of the anniversary of his death 125 years ago. Dresden 1995.
  • K. Fischer, J. Schieferdecker: The custody of the Technical University of Dresden. More than just a museum management facility. In: Hochschule Ost. Leipzig contributions to university and science. Leipzig 1998.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Geological Collections. TU Dresden - Faculty of Civil Engineering - Applied Geology, accessed on December 4, 2013 .
  2. ↑ Historical dye collection. TU Dresden - Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences - Department of Chemistry and Food Chemistry, accessed on December 4, 2013 .
  3. ^ Andreas Heine: Hermann Krone Collection. TU Dresden - Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences - Institute for Applied Photophysics , accessed on December 4, 2013 .
  4. ^ Collection of color theory. TU Dresden - Faculty of Architecture, accessed on December 4, 2013 .
  5. ^ Mathematical models. TU Dresden - Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences - Department of Mathematics, accessed on December 4, 2013 .
  6. ^ Udo Leuschner: Collection of historical electrical machines in the TU Dresden. Retrieved December 4, 2013 .
  7. ↑ Architecture Collection . TU Dresden - Faculty of Architecture, accessed on December 4, 2013 . Architectural plan collection. TU Dresden - Kustodie, accessed on November 12, 2017 .