Museum of Natural History “Dr. Curt Heinke "
The Museum of Natural History “Dr. Curt Heinke ” is part of the Zittau Municipal Museum . It is located in the city center of Zittau in Exner's house (Kirchstrasse 13).
Exnersches house
The building was built around 1800 by the Zittau merchant Exner and served as a concert hall. It was part of the small-scale closed development in the south-western and western periphery of the former Franciscan monastery . At a right angle to the east is the late Baroque two-storey “Hauptsche Haus” (Klosterplatz 1), indented from the escape from Klosterstrasse, which also forms the western end of the Klosterplatz. To the west, the "Exner House" was connected to another, no longer existing house, the facade of which faced Pfarrstrasse. The Exner concert hall was later redesigned into a residential building. In 1975 the city of Zittau bought the Exner house for the city museum.
The eaves-facing house on the north side of Klosterstraße is a single-storey, simple, classicist building with a beaver-tailed gable roof with two bat dormers on the facade side. Today the building near the confluence of Pfarrstrasse and Kirchstrasse is free-standing to the west. Because of its architectural, urban and local historical significance, it is protected as a cultural monument.
To the north is the rectory, to the northeast is the Heffterbau, to the east is the Hauptsche Haus, to the southeast is the Klosterplatz, to the south is the Alte Gymnasium and to the northwest is the Pfarrstrasse parking garage.
History of the museum
On the initiative of the grammar school teacher Curt Heinke , the Natural Science Society of Zittau carried out a geological local exhibition from August 27 to September 10, 1922 in the higher technical college for the textile industry in Zittau, which had 4500 visitors. The exhibits were collected as evidence during the geological hikes through Upper Lusatia and Northern Bohemia organized by the Adult Education Center and the Natural Science Society . The desire for a permanent exhibition that arose after the local exhibition was taken up by the organizers of the geological hikes, and a working group was formed to set up a geological museum.
On October 28, 1923, the museum was opened in the premises of the Zittau secondary school. The exhibition, which was designed from the evidence of geological hikes and gifts from collectors, attracted around 3,000 visitors in the first year and a half. Heinke was supported in the construction and expansion of the museum primarily by master locksmith Oskar Mießler. During the renovation of the secondary school, the former rector's apartment was made available to the museum in the winter of 1925, so that biological preparations could also be exhibited. The school's own collections were presented in the neighboring rooms. In the future, the museum should be expanded into a local museum with all branches of the natural sciences. On September 7, 1932, the four meter high stump of a tertiary redwood tree (“Sequoioxylon gypsaceum”) known as the “Zittauer Sumpfzypresse” was set up with a circumference of six meters from the Hartau clay pit as an outdoor exhibit in front of the Johanneum. The additions to the museum were initially announced in the Zittau daily newspapers, later in the Oberlausitz local newspaper. Purchases and donations to the school collection were published in the annual school programs. Although closely connected, both parts of the exhibition had different owners. The local history museum belonged to the Natural Science Society of Zittau, the school collection to the secondary school. After the dissolution of the associations after the overthrow of 1945, the museum was transferred to the city of Zittau.
In the 1960s the museum was closed. While the school collection was dissolved in 1965 for “lack of space” and probably disposed of, the management of the extended secondary school had no access to the museum holdings. When the school administration planned to relocate the museum to the basement of the Johanneum in 1967 due to the growing need for space, the project was made public and criticized in the Sächsische Zeitung in January 1967 . The engineering school for energy technology “Dr. Robert Mayer ” then temporarily made rooms available for the local history museum in House II (former building school). After moving from the Johanneum to Schliebenstrasse, the museum reopened on May 24, 1967.
After the city of Zittau acquired the Exner House at Kirchstrasse 13, the museum moved to its current location. On May 14, 1976, it reopened as the "Museum of Geology".
In 1999 the museum was given the new name “Museum für Naturkunde des Zittauer Land - Dr. Curt Heinke ”. In 2001 the museum was closed for personnel and space reasons. After being used as an interim depot during the renovation of the main house, the Museum of Natural History “Dr. Curt Heinke ”reopened. The registration for the visit took place in the cultural history museum Franciscan monastery. For school classes and groups, members of the “Friends of Geology and Mineralogy e. V. “thematic tours are offered. The museum has been closed since 2015 for "technical reasons".
Collection and exhibition
Initially, the exhibition in the Johanneum consisted only of regional minerals, rocks, fossils and prehistoric finds. The school collection presented next to it was not subject to any regional restrictions; its exhibits were procured and used for teaching purposes. From 1930, the local history museum was expanded to include African minerals that Heinke had brought back from his trip through Africa. In 1939 and 1940 the museum was given two desk cabinets with minerals from Heinke's estate. The exhibition was presented in the corridor and two adjoining halls of the Johanneum in several desk and stand showcases.
The exhibition was redesigned in 1976 to reopen the museum in Exner's house. In 1984 the specialist group for mineralogy and geology of the Kulturbund Zittau organized a special exhibition of minerals on the occasion of the Geology Day of the Dresden district. As part of the Zittau / Olbersdorf State Horticultural Show in 1999 , the exhibition was expanded to include a landscape model of the former Olbersdorf opencast mine .
The exposition based on the outdated scientific status of 1976 is criticized, as is the outdated design.
literature
- Wolfram Lange: Dr. Curt Heinke and the Natural Science Society in Zittau . In: Reports of the Natural Research Society of Upper Lusatia, Volume 13/2005, pp. 3–20 (PDF).
- Wolfram Lange: Curt Heinke (1890–1934) and the local museum for geology and prehistory in Zittau . In: Zittauer Geschichtsblätter, issue 50/2014, pp. 29–31.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Zittavia or: Zittau in its past and present / depicted in pictures and published. by Moritz Gabriel. With a chronological-historical text accompanied by Carl Gottlob Moráwek , Part 1, 1848, Cap. 21–24 Circular brochure of the city of Zittau from the Johannisthurme.
Coordinates: 50 ° 53 ′ 51.5 ″ N , 14 ° 48 ′ 26.1 ″ E