List of directors of the Museum of European Cultures
The list of directors of the Museum of European Cultures is a list of the directors who since 1999 in Berlin existing Museum of European Cultures have guided and its predecessor institutions since 1889th
Directors
The table can be sorted alphabetically or chronologically in the columns Name , Position and the year categories. Sorting is specified according to the year of entry into the director's position. If the starting years are the same, the person with the longer stay in the museum is classified first.
- Name : the name of the museum / collection manager, sortable by surname. In addition, the life data are given to help with classification.
- Position : Specify the exact institution name
- from : beginning of the management time
- until : end of management time
- Comments : Comments on the biography and activity as director of the museum
- Image : Portrait of the person, if there is a picture under free license
| Surname | position | from | to | Remarks | image |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Ulrich Jahn (1861–1900) |
Director of the Museum for German Folk Costumes and Home Crafts | 1889 | 1891 | The Szczecin teacher and folklorist Jahn was commissioned by Rudolf Virchow in 1888 with the collection of objects in Mönchgut on Rügen for his planned folklore museum . When the museum for German folk costumes and domestic products was founded in the spring of 1889, he was appointed director. Jahn undertook further collecting trips to expand the holdings of the new museum. | |
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Hermann Sökeland (1848–1917) |
Director of the Museum for German Folk Costumes and Home Crafts | 1891 | 1904 | Sökeland came from a family of industrialists who ran a factory for the production of pumpernickel . When Jahn resigned as director of the museum for German folk costumes and domestic products in 1891, Sökeland took over the honorary management of the museum at Virchow's request. Under his leadership, the museum took part in the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 , the German ethnographic exhibition of which was subsequently incorporated into the collection. While the museum suffered from acute lack of space, Sökeland positioned it in public with a presentation at the Berlin trade exhibition in 1896. After Virchow's death in 1902, the museum was given notice of the termination of the premises in the Palais Creutz . The future of the museum in Berlin was in limbo until in 1904 James Simon obtained the emperor's incorporation into the Association of the Royal Museums in Berlin. This ended the term of office of Sökeland. | |
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Karl Brunner (1863–1938) |
Director of the Royal Collection for German Folklore (1904–1918) and the Collection for German Folklore (1918–1928) | 1904 | 1928 | In 1904, when the Museum of German Folk Costumes and Home Crafts was accepted as the Royal Collection for German Folklore in the Association of Royal Museums and assigned to the prehistoric department of the Völkerkundemuseum , Karl Brunner, who until then was an assistant at the prehistoric collection, took over the management of the Collection. Brunner expanded the collection and tried to rearrange the collection despite the limited space. | |
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Konrad Hahm (1892–1943) |
Director of the Collection for German Folklore (1928–1935) and the State Museum for German Folklore (1935–1943) | 1928 | 1943 | In the 1920s, Hahm worked as a consultant for Reichskunstwart Edwin Redslob . In 1928 he succeeded Brunner as head of the collection for German folklore, which he was able to lead in 1935 as the State Museum for German Folklore to independence within the State Museums in Berlin. With the Bellevue Palace and the Prinzessinnenpalais , Hahm succeeded in securing new premises for the museum, reformed the exhibition activities and strengthened communication at the museum. His research served Hahm, among other things, with the use of the widespread combat rhetoric of National Socialism. He also maintained contacts with the German Ahnenerbe Research Foundation . | |
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Oswald Adolf Erich (1883–1946) |
Acting director of the State Museum for German Folklore | 1943 | 1945 | After the death of Hahm, the painter and folklorist Erich took over provisional management of the museum. Since 1932 he was employed in various functions at the museum. Under his leadership, some of the collections were relocated under the conditions of the last years of the war . Erich also expanded the collection to include new objects, most of which were lost in the war. | |
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Werner Stief (1905–1982) |
Director of the State Museum for German Folklore (East) | 1945 | 1948 | As the only remaining research assistant at the museum, Stief, whose previous work was in the context of national science, took over its management after the end of the war. While he supervised the restoration of the magazine building and the salvage of the collections of the State Museum for German Folklore in the east of the city, he worked as a curator at the Museum of Ethnology in the west . As a result, he moved work materials and library holdings to West Berlin. As a result of the currency reform, Stief finally moved to the Völkerkundemuseum, where he continued his work. The Museum für Volkskunde subsequently led a shadowy existence in the association of the National Museums in Berlin (East) until the mid-1950s. | |
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Ulrich Steinmann (1906–1983) |
Director of the Museum of German Folk Art (1955–1957) and the Museum of Folklore (1957–1971) (East) | 1955 | 1971 | Before his appointment as director of the Museum of German Folk Art in 1955, Steinmann worked at the Gotha Research Library and the Museum of German History . In 1954 he was employed as a research assistant for the collection, the future of which had been in question since 1948 and which, however, had the support of the general director Ludwig Justi . The unclear orientation of the house was reflected in the changing layout as a museum for German folk art until 1957 and then again as a museum for folklore, representing the entire scope of the collection. Steinmann set up a first presentation of the museum in the Pergamon Museum , but from 1958 the museum was only allowed a single room on the ground floor, which limited museum activity. He rebuilt the collection, which had been decimated by the war, and permanently presented study collections on agriculture and fishing in a branch in Wandlitz . | |
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Lothar Pretzell (1909–1993) |
Director of the Museum for German Folklore (West) | 1959 | 1974 | From 1934 Pretzell worked at the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett and helped set up the first exhibition at the State Museum for German Folklore under Hahm. In 1941 he became deputy director of the Salzburg Museum Carolino-Augusteum , which he took over the management of the following year. He was a member of various Nazi organizations and was involved as an expert in the confiscation of Jewish property. From 1947 until its dissolution, Pretzell worked at the Kunstgutlager Schloss Celle , of which he was director from 1953. In 1959 he moved to Berlin, where, as director of the Museum für Deutsche Volkskunde, from 1963 onwards he led the folklore collection of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in the western part of the city back into institutional independence after it had been affiliated with the Museum für Völkerkunde since the end of the war. However, it was not until 1976, two years after Pretzell's departure as director, that the museum was reopened to the public. | |
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Wolfgang Jacobeit (1921-2018) |
Director of the Folklore Museum (East) | 1972 | 1979 | Under Jacobeit's direction, the Museum of Folklore, with its limited space in the Pergamon Museum, increasingly focused on presenting temporary exhibitions, which restricted other areas of museum activity. His efforts to improve the spatial location of the museum were just as unsuccessful as the attempt to integrate the branch in Wandlitz into the association of state museums. In 1979 he left the museum to take up a professorship at the Humboldt University in Berlin , from where he helped to organize the museum with regard to the material culture of the proletariat . | |
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Theodor Kohlmann (1932–2011) |
Director of the Museum for German Folklore (West) | 1974 | 1994 | Before Kohlmann moved to the Museum für Deutsche Volkskunde in West Berlin in 1969, he worked in the museum village of Cloppenburg . In 1974, after Pretzell left, he took over the management of the museum. At the beginning of his term of office, he moved from the temporary facility in Berlin-Lichterfelde to the storage building of the Secret State Archives in 1976 . As a result, Kohlmann focused on everyday culture, which he incorporated more into the collection through purchases. A special focus was on picture sheets and wall decorations. After reunification , the museums from East and West were brought together under his leadership, with Erika Karasek working under him as director of the East Berlin Museum before she took over the management of the house after his retirement. |
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Erika Karasek (1934-) |
Director of the Museum for Folklore (East) (1980–1992) and the State Museum for Folklore (1992–1999) | 1980 | 1999 | Karasek had been working at the Folklore Museum since 1962 and, among other things, was involved in setting up the agricultural study collection in Wandlitz. In 1980 she succeeded Jacobeit as director. The new orientation of the museum towards the material culture of the proletariat she took into account, among other things, with the important exhibition Großstandtproletariat . After the reunification and amalgamation of the collection from East and West in the State Museum of Folklore, she was first director under Museum Director Kohlmann, in order to take over the sole management of the museum after his retirement. In addition to the merger of the two collections, the preparation of the further development of the museum into the Museum of European Cultures, including the European collections of the Ethnological Museum, also fell during her term of office. | |
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Konrad Vanja (1947–) |
Director of the Museum of European Cultures | 2000 | 2012 | Vanja worked at various museums before he switched to the Museum für Deutsche Volkskunde as a research assistant in 1981. As a result, he rose in the house up to the chief custodian. After the Museum of European Cultures emerged from the Museum of Folklore and the European collections of the Enthnological Museum in 1999, Vanja became its first director. The permanent exhibition Kulturkontakte - Leben in Europa , shown from 2011 on, was developed under his direction . Vanja's focus was on popular graphics and intercultural contacts. |
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Elisabeth Tietmeyer (1960–) |
Director of the Museum of European Cultures | 2013 | In 1993 Tietmeyer took over the management of the European department of what was then the Museum of Ethnology. In this function, she was supposed to prepare the collection for merging with the Museum of Folklore in the Museum of European Cultures. In 1998 Tietmeyer was appointed head of the collections department and the specialist department for Europe at the Museum für Völkerkunde. In 1999 she moved to the Museum of European Cultures, which shortly before had emerged from the merger of the Museum of Ethnology with the European collection of the Museum of Ethnology. From 2000 to 2012 she was deputy director of the Museum of European Cultures, which was headed by Konrad Vanja. The permanent exhibition Cultural Contacts - Living in Europe was co-curated by Tietmeyer. On January 1, 2013, she took up the post of director of the Museum of European Cultures. After the closure of the Museum of Asian Art and the Ethnological Museum , both of which moved to the Humboldt Forum in the center of Berlin, their museum remained as the only institution in the Dahlem museum complex, which is why Tietmeyer tried to increase the visibility of the museum. In addition to her work at the Museum of European Cultures, Tietmeyer is a member of various commissions and associations. |
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Other people associated with the museum
literature
- Erika Karasek , A Century of Commitment to Folklore 1889–1989 , in: Museum for Folklore (Ed.), Clothing Between Tracht and Mode. From the history of the museum 1889–1989 , Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin 1989, pp. 5–48.
- Heidi Müller, The concept of the collection of the Museum für Deutsche Volkskunde from its founding in 1889 to the First World War, in: Yearbook of the Berlin Museums, Volume 34 (1992), pp. 185–194.