State Coin Cabinet Saxony-Anhalt
The State Coin Cabinet Saxony-Anhalt is a collection area of the Moritzburg Art Museum Halle (Saale) and is located in Halle (Saale) . The cabinet contains a collection of historical coins , banknotes , medals , securities , medals and decorations , seals and seal impressions , stamps and coin technology devices as well as a specialist library. It was founded on November 19, 1950 as the universal numismatic collection of the state of Saxony-Anhalt and is one of 25 large institutes in Germany that deals with numismatics .
history
The beginnings of the cabinet go back to the 19th century. Coins and medals have been continuously acquired since the Halle Art Museum was founded in 1885. The locally shaped by history collection received a first embossing through the work of the art historian and sometime director of the Kunstmuseum Max Sauerlandt (1880-1934), who from 1908 to 1918 headed the Halle museum and both contemporary art medals and coins and medals of the Renaissance and the Middle Ages acquired .
On the basis of foundations such as that of the Bitterfeld District Court Councilor Friedrich Buchholz , who left his collection of over 3,000 coins and medals to the museum around 1910, or that of the Halle businessman Theodor Heynemann , who gave the museum his collection of over 1,000 coins and medals from the modern era around 1923 donated, the museum's collection multiplied.
At the end of the Second World War , the collection suffered considerable losses due to looting and confiscation.
The intention to re-establish a coin cabinet in the Halle museum in 1950 arose from the consequences of the Second World War for numismatics in Central Germany . Due to confiscations, there was no longer a nationally significant coin cabinet. Scientific numismatic research had come to a standstill. This state of affairs ended with the establishment of the State Coin Cabinet of Saxony-Anhalt , announced on November 19, 1950, as an independent collection area in the State Gallery Moritzburg Halle . The official founding decree of the Ministry of Popular Education was followed on January 25, 1951 by a circular from the Department of Art and Literature to the Departments for Popular Education of the City and District Councils, in which the first tasks of the new State Coin Cabinet are named. In addition to the organization of special exhibitions and publications, this included the “central safeguarding and utilization of the state's own holdings as well as the coins, seals and money surrogates arising from land reform ” and the “scientific advice to the coin collections in the state's museums”. At the same time, the collaboration with the Martin Luther University with regard to the numismatic training of students was expressly mentioned . The councils should arrange that "the State Coin Cabinet [...] is notified immediately of all new finds of individual coins or coin treasures".
Eberhard Mertens , who played a not to be underestimated part in the establishment of the foundation, put it in the first publication of the State Coin Cabinet in 1956:
“This finally created an institute, the lack of which had to be felt again and again as a painful loophole .... Yes, if you consider that the homeland of the province of Saxony has given the most beautiful and most important coin finds ... and none of them are permanent If they knew how to offer a place in their central German country of origin, ... one will have to admit that they faced irreplaceable cultural assets of their homeland with a complete lack of understanding ”.
The re-establishment of a universal coin cabinet is a singular process in Germany at this time, from which the historical and art-historical sciences and numismatics benefited. In addition to the monetary history collection of the Bundesbank, it was the only new establishment of a coin cabinet in the German-speaking area in the 20th century.
The first scientific director was the numismatist and pastor Eberhard Mertens (1895–1968) from Halle . Under his leadership, the collection multiplied, was indexed and cataloged. From May 1958, with the new director Eva Wipplinger (* 1928), the collection efforts focused on modern and contemporary medal art . In doing so, it tied in with the tradition of maintaining contemporary art founded by Max Sauerlandt. Ulf Dräger has been heading the most extensive numismatic collection in Saxony-Anhalt since 1988 .
collection
The State Coin Cabinet has a stock of around 30,000 coins and medals and 60,000 banknotes as well as monetary means of payment. They give an overview of the coin history of the most diverse cultures and continents from antiquity to the present . The focus is on the medieval and modern coinage of the Central German states and the collection of modern German art medals. It also has smaller stocks of seals , medals and decorations , stocks and objects on the history of science and money. These include B. Coin mandates, valuation regulations, mint master contracts or weight cups. The specialist library contains over 10,000 numismatic titles. The numismatic collections that came into state ownership as a result of the land reform have now been restituted in accordance with the provisions of the Compensation Act (AusglLeistG, March 1994, Federal Law Gazette I p. 736 ) of 1994.
Coins
The focus is on the history of coins and money in Central Germany. The focus is on the historical area of the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt . The cabinet has extensive special collections of the Anhalt stamps (loans from the city of Bernburg ) and Mansfeld . Coins from Quedlinburg , Halberstadt , Stolberg (Harz) and Magdeburg are represented as well as coins from these cities. The medieval bracteates of the Archbishopric of Magdeburg and the evidence of the Halle mints are of regional historical and numismatic interest . The history of coins in Braunschweig , Saxony and Prussia can be illustrated with some important series. Various coin finds such as those from Barnstädt , Teicha (Petersberg) , Holleben (Teutschenthal) , Wesenitz or Söllichau document the circulation of money in different times in the region. In 2019, with the support of the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation , the Kulturstiftung der Länder and the Saalesparkasse, we succeeded in purchasing more than 300 coins from Heinz Thormann's collection. Thormann collected numismatics from the Anhalt region all his life and in this way brought together an encyclopedic collection on the history of the Anhalt money.
Medals
The collection of medals is not intended to be used as a historical or numismatic documentation. The collection concept regards the medal as a special form of relief sculpture , thus as part of sculpture, and follows art historical aspects. Many sculptors of German modernism such as B. Ludwig Gies , Karl Goetz , Gerhard Lichtenfeld , Gustav Weidanz or Fritz König are represented in the collection. What should be emphasized in comparison with other institutions is the continuous concentration of the Halle Münzkabinett on maintaining modern medal art in the German-speaking area. A natural focus is the medal art from Halle, which has been continuously cultivated at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art for over 80 years . In the sculptor training, the possibilities of the relief are taught using the art of medals. The continuity of the specific medal culture in Halle, classified by art historians as the “Hallesche Medaillenschule” as early as the 1970s, is considered a special phenomenon in German medal art of the modern age. The collection that has been compiled so far is of national importance. Historically thematic focal points are the holdings of medals on the Reformation and the memory of the Reformation, the history of central German mining and, last but not least, the history of the cities, especially in Saxony-Anhalt.
Paper money
The bank note collection documents the German monetary history of the 20th century. The focus is on emergency notes from the First World War and the subsequent inflation up to 1924. These include interesting stocks of currency tokens from German and French prisoner-of-war camps from the First World War or Austro-Hungarian emergency money from 1848 and 1849. With assignats from the French Revolution , emergency notes from the Mainz Republic 1793 and the Colberg fortress in 1807 are further historically valuable evidence.
Others
The State Coin Cabinet represents the State of Saxony-Anhalt in the Numismatic Commission of the States in the Federal Republic of Germany . It is actively involved in the board of the German Society for Medal Art and in the German Numismatic Society. The board of trustees of the Gitta Kastner Foundation, which promotes research in modern medal art, is currently chaired. The cabinet endeavors to actively promote the art of medals with its own editions and the mediation of editions. From the collections of the State Coin Cabinet, special exhibitions are regularly shown at various locations.
Medals from the Landesmünzkabinett are a permanent part of the collection presentation Ways of Modernity . A separate permanent exhibition area is currently being prepared for the State Coin Cabinet at the historic mint in the basement of the south wing of Moritzburg, the so-called Old Mint.
literature
- Ulf Dräger: German art medals of the 20th century: from the collection of the State Coin Cabinet Saxony-Anhalt. Halle 1996, ISBN 3-7861-1955-4
- Ulf Dräger: History and structure of the collection of the State Coin Cabinet Saxony-Anhalt in the context of science and museums. In: Hallische contributions to the historical auxiliary sciences, H. 2, 2002, S. 8-15
- Eberhard Mertens: The finds from Teicha and Holleben. Hall 1956
- Peter Romanus (Red.): State Gallery Moritzburg Halle: History and Collections. Hall 1994
- Medal art in Halle in the 20th century. from the series "Art Medal in Germany", Volume 17 of the German Society for Medal Art, 2002, ISBN 3-7861-2462-0