Irmgard von Lemmers-Danforth

Lemmers-Danforth's home and practice before moving to Palais Papius

An exhibition room with pieces of furniture from their collection in the Palais Papius

Irmgard Freiin von Lemmers-Danforth (born March 28, 1892 in Wilhelmshaven ; † January 22, 1984 in Wetzlar ) was a German pediatrician and well-known collector of historical furniture in Wetzlar, Hesse.

Live and act

Youth and job

Irmgard von Lemmers-Danforth was born in Wilhelmshaven in 1892 as the daughter of the royal Prussian building inspector and secret senior building officer Friedrich Wilhelm Johann Freiherr von Lemmers-Danforth and his wife Maria, née Ahrens-Neuschlagsdorff. Her father's job led to frequent moves. Lemmers-Danforth graduated from the secondary girls' school in Mülheim an der Ruhr in October 1907 and spent the following years in a daughter's home in Bad Wilhelmshöhe , with his parents and on trips. On January 1, 1914, she began training as a nurse at the Evangelical Diakonieverein Zehlendorf and passed the exam a year later. In the beginning of the First World War she worked in hospitals in Berlin.

After graduating from high school in 1918, Lemmers-Danforth began studying medicine and took the preliminary medical examination at the University of Göttingen on March 24, 1921 , and the state examination on December 21, 1923. After her practical work in Augsburg and Saarbrücken , she received her license to practice medicine in 1925 . In the following year Irmgard von Lemmers-Danforth did his doctorate at the University of Tübingen with an ophthalmological paper on the therapy of ulcus rodens corneae at the University Eye Clinic in Tübingen .

Finally, on January 1, 1928, she took over a pediatrician practice in Wetzlar on Bollerbrückenplatz, today's Buderusplatz. At that time she lived in her parents' apartment in Gießen , from which she moved in 1933. During the National Socialist era , Lemmers-Danforth did not conform to the party and did not join the National Socialist Medical Association . She only gave up her pediatric practice on April 1, 1975 at the age of 83.

Building the collection

As early as the early 1930s, she began acquiring art and furnishings in certain styles , which over time has developed into an extensive private collection of furniture and home accessories. The collection, which now includes almost 500 exhibits, has been in the possession of the city of Wetzlar since 1963; since 1967 it has been known as European Renaissance and Baroque Living . Collection of Irmgard Freiin von Lemmers-Danforth exhibited in the Palais Papius .

Irmgard von Lemmers-Danforth received the Federal Cross of Merit on February 2, 1972 and on December 15, 1979 the honorary citizenship of the city of Wetzlar. In 1980 the Hessian minister of culture, Hans Krollmann , awarded her the Goethe plaque . Since 1976 she lived with her partner Hildegard Pletsch (1915–2005) also privately in the Palais Papius and guided through the exhibition rooms together with Pletsch. Irmgard von Lemmers-Danforth died in 1984 at the age of 92.

The collection was visited and assessed in 1998 by the Furniture History Society , an international association of experts in historical furniture that includes representatives from major museums and auction houses, under the leadership of the curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Wolfram Koeppe .

literature

• Wolfram Koeppe: The Lemmers-Danforth Collection Wetzlar: European living culture from the Renaissance and Baroque , Heidelberg 1992, ISBN 3-89466-004-X
• Wolfram Koeppe: The Lemmers-Danforth Collection Wetzlar , Regensburg 1994
• Irene Jung: Wetzlarer Frauengeschichte , in: Mitteilungen des Wetzlarer Geschichtsverein, 40th issue, 2001, 213-218.
• Irene Jung: Wetzlar women in the 20th century . Ed .: Women's Office of the City of Wetzlar. Wetzlar 2009, p. 42-47 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Irmgard von Lemmers-Danforth in the catalog of the German National Library
• Official website of the collection
• on the history of the collection ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )