Julius Riemer

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Julius Riemer (born April 4, 1880 in Berlin ; † November 17, 1958 in Lutherstadt Wittenberg ) was a German manufacturer, natural and ethnographic collector and museum founder.

Life as a manufacturer and collector

Julius Riemer grew up as the first child of a Berlin factory owner family. As the oldest son, he was intended to be the factory's main heir. His main interest was science throughout his life, which he was unable to practice due to time and family constraints. Collecting became a substitute for him: a visit to the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, which opened in 1889, with his grandfather was a key experience for nine-year-old Julius Riemer. Since then he has been collecting zoological specimens. At the age of 14 he already owned over 30 prepared animals. In return, he temporarily neglected school, which led to conflicts with the family. Nevertheless, he eventually took over his parents' manufacturing facilities and expanded them. In the 1940s, the company was a leader in Germany in the production of leather gloves.

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 of Europe in his life, but supported various researchers who gave him objects as thanks. He also systematically bought up entire collections, for example in 1939 he acquired Eugen Hintz's collection of more than 1,000 ethnological objects from Africa and the South Seas . The collection contained in particular natural and ethnographic objects. At the end of the 1940s he owned one of the largest and most valuable natural and ethnographic 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 - this part of the collection was known as the best and most extensive in a private collection in Germany. The collection still contains tens of thousands of objects, some of which are of very high scientific value. The museum owns one of three skin samples from Steller's manatee worldwide , the skeleton of an extinct giant alc and a very systematic collection of ethnographic pieces from Oceania , as well as larger holdings from Africa and individual exhibits from America.

As a result of the air war, Riemer decided to bring part of his collection to his house in Sieversdorf and also rented barns and other properties from farmers. Riemer's houses in Berlin were partly badly damaged during the war. When his city villa not far from the Red City Hall in Berlin was destroyed in January 1944, around a third of the collection was lost.

Riemer's factories were partly abandoned after the war and partly socialized after the war. Riemer's younger brother worked in the 1950s as managing director of the now state-owned plant near Dessau.

Julius Riemer was married a total of three times, although little information is available about his first two marriages. He divorced his first wife, Luzie, in the 1930s, and his second wife, Hedwig, died in 1945 after a long illness. From 1947 Julius Riemer was married to his godchild, the studied museologist Charlotte Mathieu, in the third marriage.

Speleology and contact with Benno Wolf

Riemer was involved in at least 20 scientific associations and societies, including a. in the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory, which still exists today . He was particularly interested in caving. Julius Riemer was on friendly terms with the most famous German cave explorer Benno Wolf . Wolf was a baptized Christian but had Jewish roots. In the Nazi era, which was becoming more and more difficult for Benno Wolf , Riemer was an important support for him - he helped Wolf wherever he could, including financial donations. Benno Wolf's legacy dates from September 5, 1936, in which he bequeathed his scientific material to Julius Riemer (KNOLLE 1990). In 1937, at Wolf's request, Riemer took over the editing of the main cave researcher association journal; only the last double year of the magazine comes from the editorial pen of Florian Heller. At times, Riemer was also the incumbent executive committee. When the pressure from the Nazis increased, Riemer felt compelled to assure Wolfram Sievers , the managing director of Ahnenerbe, who was later sentenced to death in the Nuremberg medical trial, of his cooperation on August 15, 1939 , in order to reduce mistrust. On May 11, 1941, the Reich Association for Karst and Cave Research was founded in Salzburg ; so that was Gleichschaltung of the German and Austrian caving reached. Riemer was elected to the board, held the office of treasurer and was - together with Florian Heller - editor. The old main association continued to exist. In October 1942, Riemer resigned from the office “for health reasons” - in reality there were other reasons. Because on July 6, 1942 Benno Wolf was - 71 years old - from the Gestapo arrested and the 17th birthday transportation from Berlin to the Theresienstadt ghetto deported Service. Julius Riemer could hardly help him now and also did not know what had happened to Wolf. In 1947 he wrote that Wolf had "disappeared without a trace" back then. The details of the kidnapping and death of Wolf could only be clarified after the collapse of the Nazi regime. On April 25, 1947, Riemer bequeathed Benno Wolf's estate materials in Pottenstein to the Natural History Society of Nuremberg, Department for Karst Research .

Museum of Natural History and Ethnology

Development of the museum until it was closed in 2011

After 1945, Julius Riemer received an offer from the provincial pastor and biologist Otto Kleinschmidt to set up a natural and ethnological museum in Wittenberg Castle as an extension to the local church research center . Julius Riemer has maintained both private and business contacts in and around Wittenberg for decades. In 1947 the collection was completed. The first exhibition rooms were opened in 1949, and in 1954 the Museum of Natural History and Ethnology was founded from his private collection, which he managed until his death in 1958. His wife Charlotte Riemer, who, as a trained museologist, had already supported her husband in setting up the museum, continued the museum and expanded it considerably. In connection with the GDR's planned concentration of ethnological collections in four locations, numerous loans and donations from other museums were given to the museum in Wittenberg, which, as a new establishment, supplemented the three traditional ethnological museum locations in Leipzig, Dresden and Herrnhut.

The museum took up two floors in Wittenberg Castle. On the lower floor there was the natural history exhibition with the subjects of evolution, zoological systematics and physiology and a room each with primates and ungulates; The upper floors housed exhibitions on the cultures of Africa and Oceania, as well as smaller areas on ancient Egypt and pre-Columbian America. An area on the nature of Oceania and a special exhibition on the ethnology of Japan complete the ethnological department. This exhibition concept was redesigned and modernized after the death of Ms. Riemer, but essentially remained until 2011.

From 1990 until his retirement in 2001, the official director of the museum was the ethnologist Klaus Glöckner (died 2018), who had worked at the museum in various positions since 1980. During this time he organized numerous special exhibitions or brought them to the museum. Klaus Glöckner was particularly known in the region for his active scientific educational work. With the death of Julius Riemer's widow in 2002, the collection passed to the city of Wittenberg through an inheritance contract. The collection thus became part of the municipal collections under the direction of Andreas Wurda.

Storage of the exhibition and plans for a new concept

Since the Wittenberg Castle was completely renovated and architecturally redesigned from 2011 with a view to the Luther year 2017, the exhibition there with objects from the Julius Riemer collection had to move out and was put into storage. A larger collection of ethnological objects, which was kept and exhibited on loan in Wittenberg, was returned to its original location, the Mauretianum Museum in Altenburg (Thuringia). Since a new use was planned for the castle, the search for a new location for the remaining collection began. The possibility of permanent storage of the collection was also considered. A citizens' initiative, which was converted into the Freundeskreis Julius-Riemer-Sammlung eV in 2013 , advocated a redesign of the collection. In order to achieve this goal, it promoted the preservation of the collection and its museum and scientific reception with numerous events. The association received support from scientists from all over Germany. The primate researcher Carsten Niemitz has been the patron of the Friends of the Riemer Collection since 2013 . Since 2014, the city has presented its first plans to reopen the Riemer Collection in the context of the planned museum complex on Arsenalplatz. In March 2015, the ground floor of the museum of the municipal collections in the Zeughaus in Wittenberg was opened: eighteen "crown jewels" of the city are exhibited on three hundred square meters, including three objects from Julius Riemer's collection as a reference to the permanent exhibition planned in the same building on nature and ethnology with pieces from the Riemer collection.

The new permanent exhibition "Riemer's World"

Since December 21, 2018, the collection has again had a permanent exhibition. On the second floor of the armory, around 1,500 exhibits from the Julius Riemers collection are shown on around 500 square meters of exhibition space. Objects from natural history and ethnology are presented predominantly and in roughly equal proportions. There is also a smaller exhibition area that deals biographically with Julius Riemer as a collector and patron. The exhibition with the title “ Riemer's World ” has the character of a foam magazine. Scientific content is conveyed via 15 key objects each from natural history and ethnology, in order to make the large number of exhibits accessible didactically. In the center of the exhibition is an installation in the form of a carousel, which playfully relates ethnological and scientific exhibits. Over several years of preparation, this exhibition of the Wittenberg Municipal Collections was developed in cooperation with the Friends of the Julius Riemer Collection. It is the only permanent ethnological exhibition in Saxony-Anhalt that presents exhibits from different continents.

Ethnological special exhibitions

In 2016, the Wittenberg municipal collections, in cooperation with the Friends of the Julius Riemer Collection, again went public with a special ethnological exhibition. In the armory , sculptures by the West African Lobi from the collection of the Berlin architect Rainer Greschik were exhibited at the exhibition “ The Discovery of the Individual ” . The collector then handed over a number of objects to the city. This not only continued the tradition of donating ethnological objects initiated by Riemer, but also expanded the holdings of the municipal collections through an ethnic group that had not yet been represented in the Riemer collection. The special exhibition deliberately presented a preview of the planned permanent exhibition in the same building. Since December 2017, this concept has been used in conjunction with the cross-cultural special exhibition “ Objects of Adoration - Material Evidence of Faith, Reverence and Remembrance in the Cultures of Humanity “Continued. On display are relics, votives and other cult objects from six continents and from three millennia. For the first time since 2012, natural and ethnographic objects from the Julius Riemer Collection were exhibited in a thematic context. However, since the majority of the Riemer collection was not yet available with a view to the new presentation planned for 2018, loan items were used in this exhibition as well. By expressly referring to the former Wittenberg healing and by the pointed presentation of selected objects from the Riemer collection and the collections on the city's history, the content of the museum unity of all city collections in the armory, which is aimed for in the future permanent exhibition, was confirmed. The ethnologist Nils Seethaler could be won as a scientific advisor for both special exhibitions . He also brokered the external loans and organized their transfer to Wittenberg.

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)
  • R. Gruber-Lieblich & F. Knolle: Julius Riemer - Patron of Benno Wolf - Mitt. Verb. Dt. Höhlen- u. Karst researchers 53 (2): 43–45 (2004)
  • F. Heller: Obituaries for Julius Riemer and Hans Brand - Mitt. Verb. Dt. Höhlen- u. Karst researchers 5 (2): 8 (1959)
  • MH Kater: The “Ahnenerbe” of the SS 1935–1945. A contribution to the cultural policy of the Third Reich - Studies Zeitgesch., Inst. F. Contemporary (1974)
  • F. Knolle: On the history of German caving in the shadow of National Socialism - Mitt. Verb. Dt. Höhlen- u. Karst Researcher 36 (1): 4-10 (1990)
  • F. Knolle & B. Schütze: Dr. Benno Wolf, his environment and his interdisciplinary impact - a link between the German cave exploration associations - Mitt. Verb. Dt. Höhlen- u. Karst researcher 51 (2): 48-55 (2000)
  • Wittenberg Museum. Life's work of a Berliner . In: Neue Zeit , October 17, 1951, p. 5

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b KNOLLE 1990
  2. ↑ 52,000 sights. A new museum in the castle . In: Neue Zeit , October 7, 1949, p. 4
  3. ↑ https://www.mz-web.de/wittenberg/lösungen-von-museumschef-klaus-gloeckner-hinterlaesst-viele-spuren-30058358
  4. ↑ http://riemer-museum.de/archiv/nl_2013_9-2013.htm
  5. ↑ https://www.wittenberg.de/kultur-und-tourismus/staedtische-sammlungen-i-museum-im-zeughaus.html
  6. ↑ City Museum in the Armory: It will open soon! , Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, Wittenberg edition, December 8, 2018, accessed on December 22, 2018.
  7. ↑ The Julius Riemer Collection in the Wittenberg City History Museum .
  8. ↑ https://www.mz-web.de/wittenberg/finissage-im-zeughaus-seit-es-menschen-gibt--haben-dinge-verehrt-30049570?view=fragmentPreview


personal data
SURNAME Riemer, Julius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German manufacturer and natural and ethnographic collector
DATE OF BIRTH April 4, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 17th November 1958
Place of death Lutherstadt Wittenberg