Musical Instrument Museum Berlin

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Musical Instrument Museum Berlin
Berlin Musical Instrument Museum 01.jpg
View of the museum
from Tiergartenstrasse (2009)
Data
place Berlin-Tiergarten , Tiergartenstrasse 1
architect Edgar Wisniewski based
on a design by Hans Scharoun
opening 1888 (elsewhere)
1984 in Tiergartenstrasse
Number of visitors (annually) 53,000 (2019)
operator
management
Conny Restle
Website
ISIL DE-MUS-019410

The Musikinstrumenten-Museum (MIM) Berlin (official name State Institute for Music Research Prussian Cultural Heritage ) includes around 3500 instruments, one of the largest and most representative musical instrument collections in Germany. It has been located at Tiergartenstrasse  1 in the center of Berlin since 1984, not far from Potsdamer Platz , Tiergarten district . In 2019 the Musical Instrument Museum had 53,000 visitors.

history

The museum began in January 1888 as the "Collection of Old Musical Instruments" by Philipp Spitta and Joseph Joachim at the Royal Academy of Music in Berlin. The city ​​of Berlin acquired the first 240 ancient musical instruments from the instrument collection of the Leipzig music publisher Paul de Wit . These included a double-manual harpsichord from Gottfried Silbermann's workshop , a pair of timpani from a Saxon church and a Rauschpfeife .

Other exhibits came from the Kunstgewerbemuseum . In addition to the actual collection, the museum also had a teaching and entertainment mandate; among other things, music students should have the opportunity to listen to old music as accurately as possible. This teaching assignment led to the fact that the first institute became a municipal public house on February 14, 1893. There was no celebration at this opening, and "not a single one of the ministerial officials was there." Initially, the MIM was located on the second floor of the old Berlin building academy .

At the end of the Second World War , many exhibits were lost.

Since 1936 the museum has belonged to the State Institute for Music Research (formerly: State Institute for German Music Research) and has therefore been part of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation since 1962 . Since 1984 the museum has been located in a building designed by Edgar Wisniewski and opened on February 14, 1893 on Kemperplatz, right next to the Berlin Philharmonic at the Kulturforum Berlin . Around 800 exhibits are presented there in a permanent exhibition and - if they can be used - regularly demonstrated.

Interior view of the Musical Instrument Museum

The Musikinstrumenten-Museum (MIM) and the State Institute for Music Research (SIM) form a unit in Berlin. Its building was erected in 1979–1984 by Edgar Wisniewski based on the design by the architect Hans Scharoun, who died in 1972, next to the Berlin Philharmonic . Details of the facades and the building layout on the property symbolically show the unity of performance and research. The performance of historical musical instruments takes place in a large room suitable for demonstrations, around which a gallery runs. The museum is one of the few places where a cinema organ can be demonstrated. This instrument, known as the Mighty Wurlitzer , came into the possession of the museum in 1982 as a "free transfer of ownership by the Federal Republic of Germany". Until then it stood in the concert hall of the villa of Werner Ferdinand von Siemens ( Correns manor ), the grandson of the founder of Siemens , in Berlin-Lankwitz . The instrument is played every Thursday after the museum tour at 6 p.m. and every Saturday at 12 p.m. The Instrument tuition (organology) as a discipline of musicology can be experienced in many demonstrations. The museum has its own concert hall, the Curt Sachs Hall, which is used for regular chamber concerts.

Conny Restle has been running the museum since 1994 .

collection

Exhibition space

The Berlin Musical Instrument Museum collects and shows musical instruments of European art music from the 16th to the 21st century. Around 800 of the more than 3000 instruments are on display, especially the collection of wind instruments from St. Wenzel zu Naumburg from the first half of the 17th century. Guided tours convey the sound and technical characteristics of historical musical instruments. In the history department of the SIM, a “history of music theory” is being worked out and published as a series of books on behalf of the institute.

There are in the collection

Exhibitions

  • 2009 (Nov.) - 2010 (March): The Lady with the Harpsichord - Wanda Landowska and Early Music
  • 2010 (Nov) - 2011 (May): American Sabor: Latinos in US Popular Music
  • 2012 (Feb.) - 2012 (Oct.): SANZA: African Thumb Pianos from the Collections of F. & F. Boulanger-Bouhière, the Royal Museum of Central Africa, and MIM
  • 2012: Friedrich's “Montezuma”. Power and Senses of the Prussian Court Opera .
  • 2012 (Nov.) - 2013 (Apr.): Portraits from the Golden Age of Jazz
  • 2013 (Oct.) - 2014 (Apr.): Women Who Rock: Vision, Passion, Power
  • 2014 (Nov.) - 2015 (Oct.): Beyond the Beat: Drums of the World
  • 2016 (Jan) - 2016 (Jun): Stradivarius: Origins and Legacy of the Greatest Violin Maker
  • 2017 (March) −2017 (June): Good Vibrations - A History of Electronic Musical Instruments

literature

  • State Institute for Music Research Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin (Hrsg.): Paths to music. Published on the occasion of the opening of the new house. Berlin, 1984. ISBN 3-922378-04-8

Web links

Commons : Musikinstrumentenmuseum (Berlin)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Berlin State Museums counted more than 4 million visitors in 2019. January 31, 2020, accessed July 19, 2020 .
  2. a b c Bernd Siegmund: Retirement home for musical instruments . In: Berlin Calendar 1998 , Verlag Haude and Spener / Edition Luisenstadt, 1998, p. 50/51, ISBN 3-7759-0417-4 .
  3. Paths to Music. Published by the State Institute for Music Research, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-922378-04-8 , p. 135, 139 .
  4. berlin.de: Musikinstrumentenmuseum , queried November 26, 2014
  5. a b c d e f exhibitions at MIM
  6. ^ Website of the Montezuma exhibition

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 37 "  N , 13 ° 22 ′ 15.2"  E