Otto Pniower

Otto Pniower , actually Otto Siegfried Pniower (born May 23, 1859 in Gleiwitz , Silesia , † March 17, 1932 in Berlin ) was a German literary scholar . From 1918 to 1924 he headed the Märkisches Museum in Berlin.

Life

Origin and studies

Otto Pniower was the son of a Jewish merchant. He attended grammar school in Gleiwitz until the early death of his parents and came into the care of the Baruch-Auerbach orphanage in Berlin around 1870 . During his school days at the Friedrichsgymnasium , the later literary researchers Richard Moritz Meyer (1860-1914) and Max Morris (1859-1918) became his lifelong friends. In 1878 Pniower began studying history, comparative linguistic research and philology at the Berlin University , which he completed in 1883 with a doctorate on a medieval topic. His teachers were Karl Müllenhoff and Wilhelm Scherer . Scherer had called on Pniower, who was aiming for a university career, to help with the continuation of Müllenhoff's Deutscher Altertumskunde . A public dispute arose from a competitive relationship with Gustaf Kossinna , which prompted Pniower to withdraw from older German studies around 1890 .

In literary Berlin

From then on, Pniower turned to more recent German literary history, especially Goethe research. In the following years he studied Goethe , Keller , Kleist , Grillparzer and ETA Hoffmann . As a researcher and literary critic, Pniower, who was a member of the Goethe Society , the “casual society” , the Society for German Literature and the Free Stage Association , has been one of the modernizers of Berlin's literary and theater creation since the 1890s. For reasons of existence and because he had not come any closer to his goal of starting a university career, Pniower had applied for the position of scientific assistant at the “Märkisches Provinzial-Museum” in 1893 and was accepted.

In the Märkisches Museum

The museum was founded in 1874 by city councilor Ernst Friedel as a local museum. His collection, compiled enthusiastically but without a scientifically based system, covered not only the history of Berlin, but also the prehistory and early history and natural history of the entire province of Brandenburg . In addition to antiques , it therefore also contained specimens and fossils . The museum did not have its own house, but was first in Friedel's office, then in changing temporary quarters. The management was with two members of the magistrate and three city ​​councilors , including Friedel as " primus inter pares ", around which representatives of several historical associations were grouped. The twenty-one-man board of directors met several times a year to instruct the custodian, who was assisted by two assistants. The procedure made it difficult to make quick decisions, as did the consistent recognition of scientific principles in collections and museums.

The curator Rudolf Buchholz , who had been in office since 1874, was assigned Pniower as the person responsible for the graphic collection. The former administrative officer Buchholz had found a recognized place in the museum system and local history research in Berlin without any academic training or museological experience. Pniower rose to his assistant in 1900 and was his successor in 1911 in the management of the cultural history collection.

Still active as a literary journalist, Pniower had developed a special interest in Fontane , whose “richest world experience” and “truly wise worldview” he admired. Friends of Fontane's sons, Pniower managed to acquire his estate for the museum in 1902, whereupon a Fontane archive was created. For this and in recognition of his work as an editor on the Fontane estate commission , the city of Berlin appointed him professor in the same year . In the publishing house of Fontane's son Friedrich, Pniower and Paul Schlenther published the collected works and letters of Fontane in 21 volumes in the years 1905–1910.

Pniower understood the task as curator for the best of the museum to combine with his inclinations as a literary researcher. Pniower also conveyed Berlin's cultural history as a speaker for Brandenburgia , the scientific society for local history of the province of Brandenburg and as a member of the Association for the History of Berlin . His temporary employees Max Osborn and Rudolf Pechel supported Pniower's public relations work even after she switched to journalism.

It wasn't until 1908 that the museum had its own house after sixteen years of hesitation and building. During the construction of the new building, an association was established to support the museum, to which Berlin dignitaries such as Max Liebermann , Paul Nathan , James Simon , Ludwig Delbrück , Karl Mommsen , Paul Singer and Max Steinthal belonged. Through advertising, donations and foundations , he promoted the significantly increasing quality of the collections and the increase in staff.

In the new building, however, the period- related room concept designed by its architect, City Planning Councilor Ludwig Hoffmann , did not allow ongoing modernization and expansion of the exhibition program. While the cultural history department of Pniowers was narrowed, the importance of the prehistory and early history department under the bustling director Albert Kiekebusch increased because of its educational offers aimed at schools, clubs and adult education centers. Even after leaving his offices in 1909, Friedel retained his decisive position on the board of directors.

The museum director

It was only after Friedel's death in 1918 that the city of Berlin appointed Otto Pniower, the first director of the Märkisches Museum . The mayor Georg Reicke (1863–1923), who was highly interested in local history , took over from Friedel's successor as " spiritus rector " and Hoffmann, also on the directorate, successfully insisted on keeping the daylight presentation that he had essentially developed .

The end of the First World War and the November Revolution fell during Pniower's tenure . The following social upheaval as well as a decreasing commitment of its supporters due to old age and death up to the de facto cessation of the club life led to a decrease of the public interest in the Märkisches Museum. In 1923, inflation destroyed the museum association's assets for purchases.

The museum was known to every schoolchild, but in the opinion of contemporaries under Pniower's leadership it had assumed a “somewhat familiar character” and was considered a “junk room” by some. The obsolescence law , with which the Weimar Republic compulsorily retired from 1923 onwards , led to Pniower's departure from office in 1924. The city of Berlin appointed the museologist Walter Stengel as his successor .

Otto Pniower, who converted from the Jewish to the Christian faith, had married the painter Charlotte Kuhlemann-Haesner (1890–1956) in 1919. The marriage remained childless.

Work and meaning

In two obituaries in the Vossische Zeitung on March 18, 1932, Monty Jacobs paid tribute to Pniower, who had died the day before, as a literary researcher and Max Osborn called the museum director an "incomparable connoisseur of all things Berlin and ... exemplary administrator of the treasures entrusted to him". According to his own assessment, Pniower had never seen himself as a “proper museum man”. There is no record of the extent and direction of Pniower's collecting activity in the Märkisches Museum, and there is also no closed personal estate. The memory of him as museum director quickly faded, probably also under the impression of the renewal of the museum by his successor Stengel.

Pniower remained loyal to Goethe research as an employee and director of the Museum, as shown by his contributions in the Goethe manual published by Julius Zeitler in 1916–1918 . Retired in 1924, Pniower was concerned with the plan to have a Goethe dictionary follow the Goethe manual . The work could only be started in 1946 as a joint effort by the academies of Berlin, Göttingen and Heidelberg, but goes back in part to Pniower's materials.

Honors

The Prussian Academy of Sciences awarded Pniower the Silver Leibniz Medal in 1922, and the city of Berlin appointed him to the honorary position of provincial curator and head monument conservator after he left the museum . Pniower received a grave of honor at the Dahlem forest cemetery . The status of honor grave of the city of Berlin existed until 2011.

Fonts

• Goethe's Faust. Testimonials and excursions on its genesis , Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin, 1899
• Pictures from Old Berlin , Verlag J. Spiro, Berlin 1908
• The Märkisches Museum in: Westermannsmonthshefte. 53rd volume, 105th volume, 2nd part, January to March 1909 , Georg Westermann, Braunschweig 1909, pp. 835–837
• Goethe in Berlin and Potsdam , Association for the History of Berlin, Berlin 1925

As editor:

• Theodor Fontane: Collected Works. First and Second Series. (21 volumes), (with Paul Schlenther), F. Fontane & Co., Berlin undated (1905–1906 and 1906–1910)
• Theodor Fontane. Letters (with Paul Schlenther), S. Fischer, Berlin 1910
• Letters from the field 1914/1915: for the German people on behalf of the Central Office for the Collection of Field Post Letters in the Märkisches Museum zu Berlin , Stalling, Oldenburg 1916.
• Richard M. Meyer. German literature up to the beginning of the nineteenth century , Georg Bondi, Berlin 1916
• Old Berlin humor around 1830. Pictured , G. Kiepenheuer, Potsdam 1919
• Theodor Fontane. Letters to his friends (with Paul Schlenther), S. Fischer, Berlin 1925

As co-editor OP of:

• Max Roediger: Karl Müllenhoff: Die Germania des Tacitus (= Deutsche Altertumskunde, Vol. 4), Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1900
• Wilhelm Scherer and Max Roediger: Karl Müllenhoff: Deutsche Altertumskunde, Vol. 5 , Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1891
• Max Roediger: Karl Müllenhoff: Deutsche Altertumskunde, Vol. 3 , Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1891

literature

• Lothar Schirmer : In search of the lost identity - Otto Pniower (cited here as "Schirmer"), in: General Director of the Stadtmuseum Berlin Reiner Güntzer (Ed.): Yearbook Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, Vol. VII 2001 , Henschel Verlag, Berlin 2003 , ISBN 3-89487-446-5 , pp. 289-303
• Volker Maeusel:  Pniower, Otto. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 552 ( digitized version ).
• Walter Stengel: Chronicle of the Märkisches Museum of the City of Berlin , in: Eckart Hennig and Werner Vogel (eds.): Yearbook for Brandenburg State History. Volume 30 , State Historical Association for the Mark Brandenburg e. V., Berlin 1979, ISSN  0447-2683 , pp. 7-51, on Pniower pp. 14f.
• Albert Kiekebusch (Editor) - Märkisches Museum (Hrsg.): Festschrift for the fiftieth anniversary of the Märkisches Museum of the City of Berlin (= Brandenburgia. Monthly newspaper of the Society for Local History and Heritage Protection in the Mark Brandenburg , Volume XXXIII), Berlin 1924

Web links

• Literature by and about Otto Pniower in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Quotation from Schirmer (see list of literature) with evidence: Theodor Fontane, Effie Briest. Roman , in Deutsche Literaturzeitung , 17th year (1896), col. 244.
2. ↑ So in retrospect the Vossische Zeitung on August 19, 1932, quoted in from Kurt Winkler: Walter Stengel (1882-1960) - A biographical sketch. In: Reiner Güntzer (Ed.): Jahrbuch Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, Volume III, 1997. Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1999, pp. 186–210, p. 192
3. ↑ See Martin Engel: Kulturhistorisches Museum versus Rumpelkammer. The Märkisches Provinzialmuseum in Berlin , in Alexis Joachimides (Ed.): Museum productions. On the history of the institution of the art museum. The Berlin Museum Landscape 1830 - 1990 , Verlag der Kunst, Dresden, Basel 1995, ISBN 3-364-00325-4 , pp. 122–141, here p. 129, cited above. at Winkler p. 193
4. ↑ Quotations from Schirmer, p. 189
5. ↑ Quoted from Kai Michel: The Museum and its Associations in: Reiner Güntzer (Ed.): Yearbook Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, Vol. VI 2000 , Henschel Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89487-375-2 , pp. 62–83 , here p. 75, with the proof: Otto Pniower: Das Märkisches Museum , in: Berlin. Culture. Deutsche Zeitschrift , undated (1924), pp. 81–84, here p. 83
6. ↑ Schirmer points out that he was only able to find the honorary grave "after extensive research" (Department 3 U No. 7, new: 15 / No. 230), p. 293. It has been forgotten by the Berlin administration in the directory of honorary graves been.