Julius Riemer Collection

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The Julius Riemer Collection is a natural history and ethnological collection in the care of the municipal collections of Lutherstadt Wittenberg .

General historical overview

Julius Riemer was a factory owner from Berlin who was interested in various humanities and natural science disciplines , maintained contact with numerous experts and built an extensive private collection corresponding to his interests. After the Second World War he moved this collection to Lutherstadt Wittenberg. Parts of the collection were exhibited here for decades as the private property of Riemer and his wife in Wittenberg Castle . At the same time, the museum received funding from the city. With the death of Riemer's widow in 2002, the collection became municipal property. In 2011 the collection was put into storage, as the Wittenberg Castle, in which it was housed, was renovated and rebuilt. Subsequent holdings of the collection were exhibited in some special exhibitions in Wittenberg and Halle, in particular in the cross- cultural exhibition Objects of Adoration 2017/18 conceived at the end of the Luther year 2017 . This exhibition was created in cooperation between the city as the owner of the collection and the Freundeskreis Julius-Riemer-Sammlung eV, which acts as a support association for a new presentation and the scientific processing of the collection. In cooperation with the city, the permanent exhibition Riemer's World was created in 2018 in the museum of the city collections in the armory on more than 500 square meters.

Positioning in the regional and national museum landscape

The connection between non-European ethnology and natural history is unusual in the current German museum landscape. Further examples of supraregional importance in Germany are the Überseemuseum Bremen , the Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim , the Museum Natur und Mensch Freiburg , the Naturkundemuseum Coburg and the Naturkundemuseum maintained by the Naturhistorische Gesellschaft Nürnberg . Some state museums also implement this interdisciplinary concept in their exhibitions, e. B. in Hanover, Darmstadt or Wiesbaden. At the same time, the Riemers ethnological collection is the only collection of non-European objects in Saxony-Anhalt that encompasses several continents . Other collections on non-European ethnology are the South Seas collection in Bernburg Castle , the Africa collection of Hans Schomburgk in the Querfurt Castle and the South Seas collection of Georg Forster in Wörlitz . The Riemers collection exceeds the other ethnological collections in Saxony-Anhalt many times over.

Creation of the collection

When Riemer visited the newly opened Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin in 1889 as a child , his interest in museums and their collections was aroused. His own collection grew to a few hundred pieces during his childhood: minerals, plants, insects, molluscs and especially preparations from vertebrates. Later on, Riemer regularly used business trips within Germany to expand his collection. To this end, he maintained contacts with public museums, private collectors and dealers. He bought and exchanged objects and constantly expanded his knowledge. Riemer obtained his collectibles from all continents. He did not travel to countries outside Europe himself, but supported researchers who gave him objects. He also systematically bought up entire collections. Particularly noteworthy is the collection by Eugen Hintz, acquired in 1939 and comprising more than 1000 ethnological objects from Africa and the South Seas . When the Second World War broke out, Riemer owned one of the largest and highest quality natural and ethnological private collections in Germany. The focus of the ethnological part of the collection was on Africa and Oceania . The natural products included minerals, fossils, feathers, skulls and bones, pressed plants, molluscs and insects. His main interest was zoology and included a large stock of vertebrate dermoplastics . This part of the collection was considered by contemporaries to be the most extensive and valuable in a private collection in Germany. In total, the collection catalogs comprised more than 40,000 objects, although it has not yet been possible to clarify which of them remained in the collection, as Riemer also systematically exchanged and sold in order to profile his collection. The effects of the Second World War resulted in greater losses for the collection. After the move to Wittenberg and the establishment of the museum there, ethnological and natural history exhibits from various regional collections of the GDR were concentrated in Wittenberg in the interests of the state. As a result, the collection grew again and the museum, which under the leadership of the widow Riemer became a cultural factor in Wittenberg and the entire region, gained in scientific and didactic systematics.

Composition of the collection

The exact size of the collection is currently only estimated. It should contain tens of thousands of collection items. These large numbers are achieved in particular by invertebrates . In relation to the ethnological part of the collection, around 10,000 objects can be assumed, with around half of the pieces being collected by Riemer himself. Artifacts from Africa and Oceania dominate here. There are only single pieces from other continents, especially from South America. In the case of the parts of the collection that have been loaned or donated from other museums in the former GDR, there are also larger contingents from other parts of the world. A collection of almost 2,000 objects from all continents, which came to Wittenberg on loan from the Museum Mauritianum in Altenburg in Thuringia, was returned there in 2012 and has been presented and researched there ever since. The collections remaining in Wittenberg include everyday objects as well as designated works of art, such as an Uli from New Ireland in what is now Papua New Guinea .

Friends of the collection

The Freundeskreis Julius Riemer Collection eV, also known as the Friends of the Julius Riemer Collection, is a non-profit organization based in Lutherstadt Wittenberg .

aims

The focus of the association's activities is the promotion of the Riemers Collection. The association is committed to the preservation of the collection, strives for its expansion, public exhibition and scientific processing and supports the city as owner in the realization of these goals. The association advocates full-time scientific support for the collection on the part of the city. The association holds a public meeting once a month.

backgrounds

A citizens' initiative that emerged before the museum was closed turned against permanent storage or handing over of the collection and suggested its new presentation. In 2013 the Verein-Julius-Riemer-Sammlung eV was officially founded. The association had around 100 members across Germany in mid-2018. Chairman is Michael Solf ; Carsten Niemitz is the patron of the association .

Events

Before the permanent exhibition opened in 2018 with objects from the Julius Riemer Collection and since the collection has not yet had any full-time academic supervision, the association used the exhibition space made available by the City of Wittenberg in the museum of the municipal collections in the armory for special exhibitions and lectures. The two ethnological special exhibitions organized in cooperation with the city in the Zeughaus, The Discovery of the Individual (2016) and Objects of Adoration (2017/18), attracted particular attention . The private donations from the collections of the architect Rainer Greschik and the ethnologist Nils Seethaler accompanying the two exhibitions met the goal of expanding the collection.

literature

  • Karina Blüthgen: Finissage in the Zeughaus, Since there have been people, things have been adored In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung of April 22, 2018.
  • Rainer Greschik / Nils Seethaler (preface): Lobi. West African sculptures from the Greschik collection. Published on the occasion of the exhibition “The Discovery of the Individual” in Lutherstadt Wittenberg, 2016.
  • R. Gruber-Lieblich: The Museum of Nature and Ethnology "Julius Riemer" - In: J.Hüttemann & P. ​​Pasternack: Traces of knowledge. Education and science in Wittenberg after 1945 (Wittenberg 2004)

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