Museum of West Lusatia Kamenz
The Museum der Westlausitz Kamenz deals with the landscape, nature, history and culture of western Upper Lusatia ( Westlausitz ). The regional landscape museum located in Kamenz has collections on the cultural history , archeology , geology , zoology and botany of the region.
The museum director is Friederike Koch-Heinrichs, the deputy director is Olaf Zinke.
history
The foundation stone of the natural history collection was laid on October 1, 1887 with the establishment of the Kamenz Mountain Association . This set the goal of spreading local knowledge and preserving natural monuments . With the opening of the Hutberg hotel in 1895, all of the association's collections were housed in the mountain association room, where they could be made accessible to the public.
An emerging demand for a local history museum found support in the 1920s from the city archivist Gerhard Stephan, who opened the city history museum in 1931. In 1943, due to the Second World War, the city history museum was closed, which resulted in the collections being rearranged several times. After the end of the war, these were temporarily housed in the town hall from 1954 , while part of the collections had to remain in the Lessing Museum . Therefore, the city of Kamenz made the Ponickauhaus available by a city council resolution in 1957.
In 1961 the first permanent exhibition opened and the current departments of the museum were created. In 1968 the name was finally changed to the Museum der Westlausitz Kamenz . In 1977 the first issue of the series of publications of the Museum der Westlausitz Kamenz was published and the building was now completely available to the museum.
From 1977 to 1979 the museum was enlarged and expanded, and close collaboration with volunteer conservationists and monument preservers also contributed to the growth of the collections. In 1991 the sponsor changed from the city of Kamenz to the district of Kamenz .
In the summer of 2000, the museum's collections found their place in the hodgepodge (Macherstrasse 140), as they could be stored there under the most modern conditions that the Ponickauhaus (Pulsnitzer Strasse 16, corner of Zwingerstrasse) no longer allowed. The building was renovated over the next two years. At the same time, the new permanent exhibitions, which opened in May 2002 under the name Elementarium , were created. At the same time, the renovation of the malt house on the opposite side of Zwingerstraße took place. The two buildings are now connected to one another by a glass bridge.
In 2007 the museum received the first Saxon Museum Prize .
building
Ponickauhaus
The Elementarium housed in the historic Ponickauhaus houses the museum's permanent exhibition on topics related to nature and culture in Western Lusatia, as well as changing special exhibitions. It is also connected to the city history museum in the Malzhaus via a glass bridge.
The Ponickauhaus is one of the oldest town houses in Kamenz, the history of which goes back to the Middle Ages. The oldest part of the house is the vaulted cellar, which dates back to 1225 and originally connected three town houses with cellars. These were destroyed in a city fire in the 15th century, so that the Ponickauhaus was built on their ground plan. The first documentary mention was made in 1567 when Hans von Ponickau bought the house as a treasure for his wife Barbara von Gablenz. For 100 years the house was owned by the West Lusatian noble family, to whom it owes its current name. In 1667 it finally came into the possession of the Schönberg family.
Today's late Baroque facade was built between 1745 and 1748, when the house was owned by Count Johann Casimir von Dallwitz . On the central axis, which showed the first Rococo elements, is the Count's coat of arms, which contains his initials on a mirror monogram .
Count Johann Heinrich von Geyersberg and Ernst Gottlieb von Jeschky were among the later owners of the Ponickauhaus until it became civil property at the beginning of the 19th century. After the town fire of 1842, which the Ponickauhaus survived, it was owned by various cloth makers. The Linke brothers bought it in 1919. When they filed for bankruptcy in 1933, it came into the possession of the Dresdner Bank and was used as a residential building until the last family moved out of the house in 1977.
The Elementarium , which is located in the Ponickauhaus today, has a library , a botanical garden , a café and a museum shop in addition to the exhibitions .
Malt house
The Malzhaus (Lage) connected to the Ponickauhaus and the connected Pichschuppen, an old defensive tower of the city wall, are two more of the few buildings in the city that survived the fire of 1842.
It was built in the 17th century on the area of two buildings and was originally used for malt production. Almost all households in Kamenz had brewing justice since the Middle Ages , which led to high demand for malt . There were originally seven malt houses in Kamenz, but only one of them stands today. The malt house was in operation until the 1930s.
After production was stopped, the malt house was used as a warehouse for the purchasing cooperative of the bakery trade. From 1991 it was empty again until on March 20, 2004 after the renovation the “City History in the Malzhaus” moved in. Today it is the property of the city, connected to the elementarium of the Museum der Westlausitz and included in the entrance fee.
collection
Since 2000, the objects and work areas of the museum found a new home in the hodgepodge (location) , as there was no longer enough space available in the Ponickauhaus. The hodgepodge is also a show magazine for the public in order to make museum work transparent for visitors. Around 30,000 objects of regional and supraregional importance are kept in the magazines of the hodgepodge.
In addition, archeology, education , geology and zoology have their work areas with a drawing room, laboratories and preparation workshop . Exhibitions and projects are planned and the databases are maintained and expanded. The results of the scientific research work are also published in the company's own journals and catalogs accompanying various special exhibitions.
Exhibitions
In the Elementarium of the Museum der Westlausitz there is a permanent exhibition that is divided into six themed worlds.
Stones and shapes offer the opportunity to understand how the earth came into being and how it looks today. These theme worlds also give an insight into the work of a geologist. People and benefits address the historical development of humans and Western Lusatia as well as the effects of human use on the landscape with its flora and fauna . In keeping with this, the forest theme world gives an impression of the development of the forest and the difference to man-made forests. Behind the exhibition world idea a "Flushing chamber of knowledge" hidden. Visitors are invited to pick up the finds, works of art and research work and view them up close.
The museum's special exhibitions change annually. The archaeological exhibition Vandals, Burgundies & Co. - Germanic tribes has been on view in Lusatia since November 28, 2014 .
literature
- Jens Czoßek, Friederike Koch: The Museum of West Lusatia. in: Reports of the natural research society of Upper Lusatia. Volume 15, Görlitz 2007, pp. 3–8 ( digitized version )
- Joachim Voigtmann (Hrsg.), Friederike Koch (Hrsg.): Saxon museums. Museum of West Lusatia Kamenz. Saxon State Office for Museum Affairs , Chemnitz 2005, ISBN 3-9810142-2-7
Individual evidence
- ^ Saxon Museum Prize 2011. (No longer available online.) Saxon State Ministry for Science and Art , archived from the original on March 5, 2013 ; accessed on March 7, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 16 ′ 11.5 " N , 14 ° 5 ′ 34.6" E