Museum for Glass Art Lauscha

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Farbglashütte, exhibition location since April 2014

The Museum für Glaskunst is a museum in Lauscha , opened in 1903 , which traces, scientifically investigates and presents the history of glassmaking and art glassblowing in the region around Lauscha on the ridge of the Thuringian Slate Mountains . The Lauscha glassworks is considered the mother glassworks of the Thuringian glass industry .

location

The museum for glass art is located in the city of Lauscha , district of Sonneberg . The exhibition is shown in the Farbglashütte on Straße des Friedens 46. The place Lauscha forms the center of the old glassworks region in the eastern Thuringian Forest and in the Thuringian Slate Mountains.

History of origin

Old school, historical location 1903–2013

The foundation of the museum

The museum emerged from a display collection of high-quality glasses and glass objects that was donated by the people of Lauscha in 1897 on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Lauscha glassworks. This exhibition was opened on August 7, 1897 in the newly built train station school. At the suggestion of the secondary school teacher Armin Apel and the art glass blower and teacher of the technical school for art glass blowing Christian Eichhorn-Sens, from 1905 head of the glass blower workshop of the technical school, Otto Müller-Pathle and Elias Hirsch, the collected exhibits were in the drawing room of the technical college in the old school , a half-timbered building erected between 1849 and 1851 near the old village glassworks, or at the hut square that was created by its demolition in 1905.

The trade association founded in 1898 decided to preserve this unique and art-historically significant collection, to add to it and to expand it into a show on the history of the place and its inhabitants. The parish council Louis Müller-Pathle and the parish council approved the idea of ​​founding a local and local museum. In 1900 the municipality acquired the permit to exhibit the exhibits in the technical college. In 1903 the expanded museum was opened as a local museum . The historic school building at today's Oberlandstrasse 10 remained the location of the exhibition for 110 years until the end of 2013.

The development to the museum for glass art

Paul Eichhorn, a senior commercial teacher and director of the vocational school who was familiar with glass production, became the museum's long-term director. Under his leadership, it was built up to 1929 to become the only special museum for glass art in Germany at the time. The museum's financial possibilities were very limited. Most of them were inheritance items that were given to the museum as gifts or on permanent loan. A particularly valuable private collection of 600 glasses from the local pharmacist Richard Thiel from Lauscha could not be taken over. This collection came into the possession of the Sonneberg Toy Museum in 1912 for a purchase price of 10,000 marks and was thus preserved in the region. As a result of the First World War, the art and trade association was barely able to work and a considerable part of the loans was reclaimed from the owners. In 1919, due to a lack of space, the museum management decided to give up the local history collection and to specialize the museum in the collection of glass art.

In 1925 interested residents founded a museum association, which at times had over a hundred members who volunteered their knowledge and skills for the further development of the museum. In 1932, the association decided to rename the museum the Museum für Glaskunst Lauscha . After the technical college had moved to the new vocational school in Bahnhofstrasse in 1936, more rooms in the old school could be used as exhibition space.

Thanks to scientific collaboration with Bavarian and Württemberg museums and glassworks, the Lauscha Museum became increasingly well-known in the art world in the 1930s. Valuable donations came from the Zwiesel technical school (1932), the Württembergische Metallwarenfabrik (1934), the Schott works Jena (1935) and the Brehmenstall glassworks in Ernstthal . Local glassblowers also repeatedly gave lamp work to the museum.

Museum operation in modern times

The collection survived the turmoil of the Second World War unscathed, and museum operations were resumed as early as May 1945. The museum was officially reopened on October 23, 1949. First Paul Eichhorn was appointed honorary curator. In 1953, when the museum came under the control of the city of Lauscha, Rudolf Hoffmann was the first full-time director to take over the administration, scientific processing, archiving and exhibition of the exhibits. The museum has now used almost the entire building as an exhibition space. Historical Lauscha glasses and Bohemian glass made of iron bread from purchases and foundations expanded the inventory. In cooperation with VEB Glaskunst and the interest group Glaskunst, the museum organized an external special course of the technical school for applied arts Schneeberg with a degree as a glass designer after three years of training.

After a renovation phase, the Lauscha Museum was reopened in 1972 with a modern exhibition concept. The museum showed exhibitions in other museums in the GDR , Hungary , Finland and the ČSSR . With the support of the Suhl District Council , the Lauscha Museum received back more than 900 glass objects scattered across other cultural institutions, including the pharmacy collection that had once been lost to Sonneberg. In 1981, pearls and flacons from the collection of F. Sachse & Co. from Neuhaus am Rennweg were added to the collection, along with works from the glass symposia held in 1981, 1983, 1986, 1989 and on the occasion of Lauscha's 400th anniversary in 1997 in the glassworks as well as a historical pressed glass collection in 1992. In the course of a redesign of the exhibition, the systematic collection of Lauscher Christmas tree decorations became a new focus in 1994. The historical and modern glasses were labeled and exhibited according to scientific criteria, and showcases for special exhibitions were purchased with the support of the Thuringian Ministry of Culture . In 1999 eight of the oldest exhibits were stolen by strangers, one object was tracked down and returned in 2004 by an attentive collector.

New developments

In the last few years the stocks have been systematically supplemented. The concept of the permanent exhibition has been revised and the presentation of contemporary glass art has been expanded. In addition, there were 4 to 5 temporary exhibitions each year. Cooperations developed with the graphic museum Bad Steben , the Egyptian Museum Berlin and the Bonn Science Center . From 1992 the museum directors Helena Horn, Uwe Claassen and finally Günter Schlüter, who retired on December 31, 2011, were in charge.

In January and February 2014, the exhibition moved to a modern, barrier-free exhibition area in the color glass works, which was released on April 12, 2014. A conceptual innovation is a cabinet in which the development from the hollow-blown glass bead to the Christmas tree ball , one of the economically most important inventions of the Lauscha glass-blowing workshop, can be clearly understood. Interested visitors can take a look at around 2,500 objects in a viewing depot.

The museum today

Today the museum is sponsored by the city of Lauscha, which has been supported since 1991 by the support group of the Museum für Glaskunst Lauscha eV. The Museum für Glaskunst collects, documents, researches and presents Thuringian glass in its entire temporal and thematic breadth: from the late Middle Ages to the present day, from early forest glass to courtly and bourgeois pompous vessels, glass beads, glass eyes , toys and technical glass to handicrafts and on contemporary glass art.

There are more than 10,000 exhibits in the scientific inventory. During the relocation work, over 5,000 individual objects were newly inventoried and photographed. The work processes and manufacturing techniques of traditional Christmas tree decorations are explained in a show workshop. An archive and a library with approx. 3,000 works from specialist literature on glass-blowing and on regional and cultural history are attached to the museum.

The most important new acquisitions include works by Albin Schaedel , Walter Bäz-Dölle , Michael Draews and Alex Arbell as well as a donation of glass objects by the art glass blower Otto Müller-Sachs (* December 6, 1922; † April 1, 2012).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sparkassen-Kulturstiftung Hessen-Thüringen (Ed.): Museums in Thuringia . Frankfurt a. M. 1995, p. 124 .
  2. ↑ Lauscha newspaper. (PDF file: 0.2 MB) City of Lauscha, February 7, 2014, pp. 6 - 7 , accessed on February 8, 2014 .
  3. ↑ Lauscha newspaper. (PDF file: 0.2 MB) City of Lauscha, April 4, 2014, pp. 13-14 , accessed on April 9, 2014 .
  4. ↑ Lauscha newspaper. (PDF file: 0.2 MB) City of Lauscha, November 8, 2013, p. 1 , accessed on November 8, 2013 .
  5. ↑ Museum statutes. (PDF file: 0.2 MB) City of Lauscha, May 1, 2002, accessed on June 13, 2010 .

Remarks

  1. ↑ In the original Lauscha glassworks , glass products were produced unchanged from 1597 to around 1900 using traditional wood firing. The glassworks of Schmalenbuche (1607), Grumbach (1616), Bischofsgrün (1616), Piesau (1623), Klein Tettau (1661), An der Sieglitze (1698), Ernstthal (1707), Henriettenthal (1720), Limbach (1731) and Glücksthal (1736), of these foundations in Altenfeld (1646), Stützerbach (1656), Alsbach (1711), Habichtsbach (1735) and Sophienthal (1768), as well as later the table glass works Marienthal (1828) and Bernhardsthal (1829), the Elias Greiner-Vetter-Sohn (1853), Louis Greiner-Bock & Sohn (1856) and Obermühle (1856, from 1897 Kühnert & Sons) huts in Lauscha and Eugen Eichhorn in Steinach (1862) and the Brehmenstall glass works (1923) in Ernstthal and Johann Georg Schneider (1924) in Lauscha. Firing with firewood became more and more unprofitable compared to the coal or gas fired huts. The intensive clearing of the surrounding forests had led to a shortage and several times to significant price increases for firewood. The wood fair was replaced in 1900. The last working day in the village glassworks in Lauscha was December 21, 1901. On May 10, 1905, demolition of the hut began. They were replaced by the more modern glassworks and factories in and around Lauscha, some of which still exist today. The continuity of glass production and processing in the region is unbroken to the present day.

literature

  • Barbara Bock: Museum for Glass Art Lauscha. In: Thüringer Monatsblätter No. 4. Wutha-Farnroda 2003. pp. 51–52.
  • City of Lauscha (Hrsg.): Festschrift for the award of city rights. Friebel-Druck, Saalfeld 1957.
  • City of Lauscha (Hrsg.): Historischer Bilderbogen - A foray through the history of Lauscha and Ernstthal. Geiger-Verlag, Horb am Neckar 2008, ISBN 978-3-86595-255-4 .

Web links

Coordinates: 50 ° 28 ′ 37.1 ″  N , 11 ° 9 ′ 34.3 ″  E