Museum Bautzen
The Bautzen Museum ( Upper Sorbian Muzej Budyšin ), which is also the regional museum of the Saxon Upper Lusatia , is located on the Kornmarkt and today houses the most extensive museum collections in the city of Bautzen . With several hundred thousand objects, it is one of the largest and most important museums in Upper Lusatia . The permanent exhibition is divided into three subject areas: Region, City of Bautzen and Art. In particular, the prehistoric and early historical collection, but also the art collection, is of national importance. In addition, there are regularly changing special exhibitions.
history
The bookseller Oskar Roesger is considered to be the founder of the Bautzner Museum today . At his suggestion, in 1868 the trade association Bautzens sent a request to the city council to provide premises for the exhibition of ancient objects in order to prevent the already looming migration of art treasures from the city and the surrounding area. Roesger left his own, already extensive collection to the city. As a result, the “Alterthumsmuseum der Stadt Bautzen” was opened in 1869 in a room in the old community school on Wendischer Graben. The following years were characterized by a rapid growth of the collection through numerous donations and bequests from citizens, which are exemplary of the unselfish attachment of the people with their city and region, which was typical at the time.
Of particular importance for the collection and its main focus, which can still be identified today, however, were the transfers by individual outstanding donors. The Dresden painter and copyist Emilie Henriette Therese from Winckell left 119 pictures of the city in her will as early as 1867, i.e. before the opening of the city museum, which formed the first foundation of the picture gallery. The legacy of Friedrich Carl Gustav Stieber , who brought a large number of exhibits and money into the Bautzen museum property in 1877, was valued so highly that the museum was temporarily referred to as the "Stieber Museum" from 1884. In 1898 the museum received part of the valuable donation from Hans von Gersdorff auf Weicha (1630–1692).
Due to the rapidly growing collection, the museum had to move several times due to lack of space. In 1880 the location changed from the community school to the building at Lauenstrasse No. 10 and in 1884 to the second floor of the rebuilt Gewandhaus .
In 1906 Otto Weigang donated enormous sums of money to the museum in addition to around 200 paintings, with the express purpose of building a dignified, modern new museum building. In 1912 the "Provincial Museum of Saxon Upper Lusatia" was opened at its current location on Kornmarkt . In addition to the collections, the building also housed existing scientific societies, such as the scientific society "Isis", which has existed since 1846, and the Society for Anthropology and Prehistory, founded in 1901.
In the 1920s, the gallery and the graphic collection in particular experienced valuable expansions. During the Nazi era, Bautzen was affected by the “ Degenerate Art ” campaign in 1937 , during which valuable works were lost. In the same year - in the course of the liquidation of the Wendish Museum - its exhibits were transferred to the city museum. These exhibits were gradually returned to the re-established Sorbian Museum during the GDR era .
In the course of the heavy fighting in April 1945 , the Bautzen collections suffered serious losses. On the one hand, the building was damaged in the course of the tank and infantry battles within the city. But looting at the relocation site in Leisnig had more consequences .
Under the direction of Eva Schmidt, the museum was able to close important gaps within the collection in the GDR era and, thanks to extensive temporary exhibitions and publications, was once again increasingly noticed nationally.
- Directors
- 1919–1946 Walther Biehl
Museum building
Today's museum complex was built in two different construction phases.
The main building was completed in 1912 after two years of construction. The whole thing was based on the then common idea of accommodating municipal collections in a single building and making them accessible to the public in a certain order. It was built according to plans by A. Göhre in the reinforced concrete construction method customary at the time and already included modern museum technology. The demand for a total work of art through the unity of building and exhibition objects leads to a carefully planned sequence of rooms from the basement to the third floor.
The extension, in addition to the museum use, other uses such as Sparkasse contained and includes today, was created during the Great Depression in the years 1930/1931 and was only made possible by a donation frontier of the empire. The design came from the Dresden architect Otto Schubert. The extension building mainly contained rooms for changing exhibitions.
Between 1992 and 2009, the building, including the interior, was gradually refurbished in accordance with a listed building.
Collections
Regional and prehistory collection
The prehistoric and early historical part of the collection comprises more than 200,000 testimonies from the archaeological epochs from the Paleolithic to the early medieval period in over 35,000 find complexes. The size and good state of preservation make this collection of national importance.
The collection on regional history consists predominantly of furnishings and utensils from villages in Upper Lusatia in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The natural history collection still includes a regional rock collection and a collection of bird preparations and eggs. Large parts of the collection, for example the extensive insect collection, were handed over to Görlitz before 1989 .
City history
The extensive collections on the city's history trace historical developments in the city from the Middle Ages to the present day. There is overlap with the art collection, as many historical paintings in the city also belong to this area of the collection.
Art collection
The art collection includes around 17,000 objects from the beginning of the Renaissance to the beginning of the 21st century. The top works include paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder , Carl Gustav Carus , Franz von Lenbach , Max Liebermann , Otto Dix and Carl Lohse .
literature
- Guide through the Stieber Museum in the city of Bautzen. Monse, Bautzen 1897 ( digitized version )
- Dieter Beaujean, Ophelia Rehor, Katja Margarethe Mieth (eds.): Graphics up to 1700: From Dürer to Sadeler. Inventory catalog Museum Bautzen . Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2011, ISBN 978-3-942422-32-1 .
- Saxon State Office for Museums Chemnitz / City Museum Bautzen (Ed.): City Museum Bautzen - Regional Museum of Saxon Upper Lusatia. Leipzig 1994
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 10 ′ 48.9 ″ N , 14 ° 25 ′ 37.4 ″ E