Roman Museum Remagen
 Roman Museum Remagen |
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| Data | |
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| place | Remagen |
| Art |
roman museum
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| ISIL | DE-MUS-166912 |
The Römisches Museum Remagen is a museum for the Roman history of the city of Remagen in the district of Ahrweiler in Rhineland-Palatinate . The building stands as a cultural monument under monument protection .
Rigomagus fort
In Roman times , the entrance area of the Principia , the staff building of the Roman fort Rigomagus (according to Celtic Rigomagos , which means “Königsfeld”), was located at the site of the Roman Museum . Little is known about the foundation of the auxiliary fort on the Lower Germanic Limes along the Rhine , but the presence of the Roman troops can be proven as early as the Augustan period. At the time of Emperor Claudius , a fortification with wood and earth can be proven, a stone fort was only built under Emperor Vespasian , which was reinforced several times.
When interest in exploring the Roman Limes increased in the second half of the 19th century and many finds from Roman times were also found in Remagen, the first idea was to store and display them in the council chamber. Around 200 objects were grave goods from Roman and Franconian graves.
After excavations in 1900 on the occasion of the new construction and expansion of the parish church of St. Peter and Paul , the decision was made to convert the Gothic Knechtstedensche chapel from the 15th century into a museum. This was made possible by Max von Guilleaume from the Guilleaume entrepreneurial family in Cologne , who belonged to the Remagen city council. He bought the chapel and donated it to the city.
Architecture of the museum building
The former chapel is a simple, made of exposed Feldstein erected hall with a gable roof and a Gothic three-eighths-chancel . The substance of the Gothic choir with ribbed vaults , carved consoles and three Gothic tracery windows has been preserved.
From 1903 to 1905 the chapel was converted to make it suitable for a museum under the direction of the Bonn architect Carl Hupe. In accordance with the new use, the west facade of the chapel was given four large windows and a gallery was added. The gallery and stairs were equipped with elaborate cast iron railings, probably from one of the nearby cast iron huts .
The renovation work in 1903 also brought to light the large column bases just below the floor that belonged to the entrance hall of the headquarters building of the Roman military camp. The column bases and their foundations, preserved in situ , were made accessible in the cellar.
History of the museum
On May 10, 1905, the building was opened as a local museum . During the First World War, the museum director at the time, the pharmacist Eugen Funck (1862–1935), created an inventory book that he continuously updated. In 1939 a total of 2058 objects were registered.
With the start of the bombing in World War II, part of the museum's holdings had been housed in Remagen cellars. Some particularly valuable pieces were moved to the Marienstatt monastery in the Westerwald. The museum building suffered severe damage during the bombing of Remagen in the winter of 1944/45. All in all, around 80% of the collection was lost, a large part due to looting after the end of the war, as the house remained unsecured for a long time. The boxes stored in the city's cellars were almost completely looted. The items stored in Marienstadt, on the other hand, were returned to Remagen undamaged in 1947.
Only in 1948 did the war damage repair work. First the roof and the windows were repaired. Since most of the collection was lost in the post-war years, the Mayor of Remagen, Hans Kemming († 1983), sent an appeal to the citizens on December 17, 1954 with the request to return any “remaining pieces” to the city. The first museum exhibition after the war took place in 1955, curated by the prehistorian Siegfried Gollub (1915–1983) from Breslau . After a realignment in 1989, it was reopened as the Roman Museum Remagen . The building was listed as a historical monument in 1994.
exhibition
The museum documents life and death in a Roman auxiliary troop fort using exhibits found exclusively in Remagen . The finds of the Roman barracks and the civil settlement from three centuries and the research results of modern archeology are shown. In the cellar, the burial customs of the 1st and 2nd centuries are presented using eight graves. On the ground floor, a large number of Latin inscriptions found in Remagen document the daily life of the soldiers. On the gallery, Roman craftsmanship is shown through found objects made of ceramics, glass, terracotta , terra sigillata and metal.
One of the smallest inscriptions is also one of the most interesting. On the bottom of a pitcher there is a Roman italic , a Latin script that only specialists can read:
" Quisquis amat / pueros sene / finem puellas / rationem sacli / no refert "
The classical philologist Franz Bücheler from Bonn translated this freely in 1907: “Anyone who loves boys and girls without an end will soon come to an end” and referred to comparable graffiti in Pompeii . For a simpler explanation, the jug may have served as a money box.
The Roman script is known from such graffiti on walls and objects. Even on the wax tablets found here, texts can sometimes be deciphered that were carved into them with a stylus. Inkwells and steel nibs were also found.
literature
- Eugen Funck: Guide through the collections of the Städt. Museum to Remagen and an outline of the city's history in the Frankish and Roman times . Georgi, Bonn 1905 ( digitized version ).
- Kurt Kleemann: The Roman Museum Remagen (= Rheinische Kunststätten Heft 401). Cologne 1994, ISBN 3-88094-759-7 .
- Kurt Kleemann: 100 Years of the Roman Museum Remagen (1905-2005) In: Ahrweiler district. Heimatjahrbuch 2005 , p. 107ff. ( Digitized version ).
Web links
- Roman Museum on the website of the Remagen city administration (with opening times), accessed on June 17, 2020.
- Roman Museum Remagen . Museum Association of Rhineland-Palatinate, accessed on June 17, 2020.
- Museums: Roman Museum Remagen . Mos majorum, accessed June 17, 2020.
Individual evidence
- ^ General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate (ed.): Informational directory of cultural monuments - Ahrweiler district. Mainz 2020, p. 57 (PDF; 5.1 MB).
- ↑ a b c d e f Kurt Kleemann: 100 Years of the Römisches Museum Remagen (1905-2005) In: Ahrweiler district. Heimatjahrbuch 2005 , p. 107ff. ( Digitized version ).
- ^ Roman Museum . RheinSteig, Romantischer Rhein Tourismus GmbH, accessed on June 16, 2020
- ^ March 7, 1945. The Remagen Bridge State Main Archive, accessed on June 16, 2020