National Museum of Szczecin
The Stettin City Museum , also Stettin City Museum , was the City Museum of the City of Stettin from 1913 to 1945 . The building forms the optical center of the hook terrace , a landmark of Szczecin, and today houses the National Museum of Szczecin ( Muzeum Narodowe w Szczecinie ), whereas the city museum has been housed in the rebuilt old town hall since 1975.
history
Beginnings and World War II
The city of Stettin, capital of the Prussian province of Pomerania , only created its own city museum during the last years of the empire. This is where the various Szczecin collections that have been created since the 19th century are brought together.
The beginnings of museum work in Szczecin go back to 1824, when the Society for Pomeranian History and Classical Studies was founded. As early as September 23, 1826, the first collection was made accessible to the public in the Ducal Palace.
The museum building was completed in 1913 and has since formed the architectural focus of the hook terrace, which was laid out between 1900 and 1914 . The architect was the Szczecin City Planning Officer Wilhelm Meyer-Schwartau . The building is imposing and spacious, but the Szczecin museum expert Otto Kunkel also points out in retrospect that no museum experts were consulted for the planning and that the premises hardly did justice to the diversity of the museum assets on display. The building was intended for an extension in the rear area from the start, but this was not done.
The first director of the Municipal Museum was from 1913 to 1934 Walter Riezler , who with his modern views not only met with approval from the conservative bourgeoisie in Szczecin. He was suspended after the National Socialists came to power in April 1933 and prematurely retired in 1934. His successor as museum director was his long-term employee Otto Holtze , after his death in 1944 Frida Endell (1897–1980) was the museum director until 1945 .
At the end of the Second World War , Endell arranged for museum items to be secured in the museum cellar and in the safe of the Sparkasse. The most valuable art objects from the painting collection were brought to safety to the west and stored in the Veste Coburg .
Development since 1945
After the Second World War, when Szczecin came to Poland , the Polish state took over the museum property that remained in Szczecin. The Szczecin City Museum was established as a Polish museum on August 1, 1945. The new Stettin City Museum was set up on Luisenstrasse in the former Provincial Museum. The marine museum was opened in the museum on the hook terrace. On January 1, 1949, the City and Sea Museum were merged and converted into the Museum of Pomerania. On January 1st, 1950, all museums in Poland were nationalized. The Stettin Museum (City and Sea Museum) was given the supervision of all regional museums in Pomerania (Belgard, Köslin, Stolp and Rügenwalde). In 1970 the museum received the status of a national museum. In 1975 the Szczecin City Museum was relocated to the city's rebuilt old town hall.
The National Museum of Szczecin ( Muzeum Narodowe w Szczecinie ) is now located in the building of the former City Museum on the Hook Terrace . It contains exhibitions on the Pomeranian regional history, especially from the Middle Ages and the early modern period, on the prehistory and early history of Pomerania, copies and originals of Greek antiquities that were already collected before the First World War, a smaller exhibition of folklore holdings of Pomerania, mainly from the period before 1945 and an extensive inventory of shipping in Szczecin, mainly from the period after the Second World War. The most extensive comparable inventory in Poland is the collection of ethnographic objects from Africa, the South Seas and America, which were acquired in the decades after the Second World War. Above all, masks and sculptures from Africa are exhibited in three halls, but their authenticity is largely doubted by experts. However, the two reconstructed farmsteads of African cultures are considered to be remarkable and unique from a didactic point of view. a. the Lobi. There is also a smaller collection of older souvenirs from Africa in the exhibition, which the international museum system does not consider to be significant.
The paintings from the Veste Coburg and other relocated collections formed the basis of the museum of the Pomeranian Foundation , which opened in 1972 in Kiel . Together with the other collections of the Pomeranian Foundation, they were transferred from Kiel to the newly founded Pomeranian State Museum in Greifswald in 1999 .
In 2012/2013, exchanges of initially archaeological artefacts between the Pomeranian State Museum Greifswald, the State Office in Schwerin and the National Museum Stettin were agreed and implemented. In this way, the artefacts that can be assigned to the respective find areas and locations of the territories of the respective museums are exchanged. So were z. For example, the finds from Schlossberg Gützkow ( Petzsch / Wilde excavation 1930–1934), some of which were delivered to Stettin to the Provincial Museum at the time, were handed over to the Greifswald collections via the Schwerin State Office .
Collections
The collections on display included:
- A collection of copies of ancient sculptures, founded by Heinrich Dohrn . The copies were made in bronze and marble.
- A painting collection whose older holdings go back to the Art Association for Pomerania founded in 1834 .
- An ethnological collection with holdings from the Pomeranian Museum Association founded in 1863 .
- A collection of ship models from the Szczecin Vulcan shipyard .
- From 1913 to 1928 also the antiquities collection of the Society for Pomeranian History and Archeology . In 1924 the collection was named Provincial Collection of Pomeranian Antiquities and in 1927 the Society transferred it to the Provincial Association of Pomerania . In 1928 the collection was transferred from the Municipal Museum to the newly created Provincial Museum of Pomeranian Antiquities (1934–1945 Pomeranian State Museum Stettin) in the Old Stable House . From 1924 Otto Kunkel was custodian of the collection , who subsequently became director of the new provincial museum .
literature
- Ilse Gudden-Lüddeke (Hrsg.): Chronicle of the city of Stettin. Verlag Gerhard Rautenberg, Leer 1993, ISBN 3-7921-0515-2 , pp. 610-613.
- Genowefa Horoszko: Guide to Pomeranian Museums. Marshal Administration of the Pomeranian Voivodeship, Stettin 2001, ISBN 83-86136-13-8 , p. 48 ff.
- SP Kubiak (ed.): Sztuka zwyrodniała ze zbiorów Muzeum Miejskiego w Szczecnie wśwetle źródeł archiwalnych / Classical Modernism - Degenerate Art from the holdings of the Szczecin City Museum in the light of the archival sources. Szczecin 2017.
- Otto Kunkel : Development and nature of the city museum on the hook terrace in Stettin. In: Pommern ( ISSN 0032-4167 ), year 1971, issue 3. (reprinted in: Die Pommersche Zeitung , year 2012, no. 51/52, pp. 12-14).
Web links
- City Museum Szczecin . In: Archive Guide Stettin on the BKGE website
- Official website of the National Museum of Szczecin (English, Polish)
Individual evidence
- ^ Archaeological reports from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , Volume 20, 2013, pp. 33 ff, ISSN 0946-512X
Coordinates: 53 ° 25 ′ 48.5 ″ N , 14 ° 33 ′ 52.5 ″ E