Moritzburg Art Museum Halle (Saale)

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North wing in the inner courtyard of Moritzburg with the main entrance of the Moritzburg Art Museum Halle (Saale)

The art museum Moritzburg Halle (Saale) is the art museum of the state of Saxony-Anhalt . It emerged from the municipal museum for arts and crafts of the city of Halle (Saale) , founded in 1885 . In its more than 130-year history, it has developed into one of the most important museums for the visual and applied art of modernism in Germany .

Museum history

From the foundation to the First World War

Today's Art Museum Moritzburg Halle (Saale) was founded as the Municipal Museum for Art and Applied Arts in 1885 in the old calibration and weighing office on the Great Berlin in the south of the historic old town of Halle . The small founding collection has already been expanded by the museum's first honorary curator, Franz Otto, including the purchase of the South Sea collection from Franz Emil Hellwig in 1899 and, above all, donations from various art collectors, such as Adolph Thiem .

In 1904 the second location of the museum was opened in the ruins of the former archiepiscopal residence , the Moritzburg , in the north-western part of the historic old town center. For this purpose, a historicizing replica of the Thalamt at Hallmarkt was built in the south wing of the building complex, which had been destroyed since the 17th century . The Renaissance building, the seat of Halle's salt count , was demolished in 1881, and the two historic rooms (festival room and court room), unique examples of Mannerist interior design in central Germany, were originally recovered and integrated into the upper floor of the new building in Moritzburg. In 1904 the Talamt in Moritzburg , built according to a design by Karl Rehorst , was opened as a museum. By 1913, the construction of the southwest bastion and the so-called battlements in the east wing to the city had been completed. The impressive domed hall in the south-west bastion as a barrel-vaulted exhibition hall was not completed until 1917. Until 1920, the rooms at the Great Berlin functioned as a picture gallery primarily for contemporary art and the rooms in the Talamt in the Moritzburg for the presentation of the old masters and the handicraft collection.

Max Sauerlandt, first director of the museum
Lovis Corinth: Self-Portrait, 1909 - one of Max Sauerlandt's early acquisitions of contemporary art.

In 1908 Max Sauerlandt was appointed as the first administrator of the city collections paid by the city administration; from 1910 he was officially director of the museum. He significantly expanded the two collection strands of fine and applied arts and placed the focus on contemporary modern art . Until the outbreak of World War I , he acquired significant bundles of works such as B. by Max Liebermann , Max Slevogt , Lovis Corinth , the young Max Beckmann , Wilhelm Lehmbruck , Emil Nolde and Christian Rohlfs . The purchase of Nolde's Last Supper in 1913 caused a national museum dispute a year later over the question of whether a museum is entitled to acquire contemporary art. Wilhelm von Bode , director of the Royal Picture Gallery in Berlin, took the opposite position to Sauerlandt .

Weimar Republic

In 1919 Max Sauerlandt moved to Hamburg as director of the Museum of Art and Industry . Nevertheless, he determined the development of the Halle museum until 1926. Sauerlandt's successor Burkhard Meier was in office for only one year. In 1921 his contract was not renewed after the probationary year. As a result of inflation, the director's position was removed from the municipal budget. The management of the museum was shared by the Lord Mayor Richard Robert Rive , the town planner Wilhelm Jost and the acting director of the museum, Paul Thiersch , founding rector of the art school in Burg Giebichenstein .

In 1920 the museum had to vacate the premises on Great Berlin. All collections have been concentrated and exhibited in Moritzburg since 1921. In autumn 1924, Max Sauerlandt brokered the acquisition of 24 expressionist works from the collection of Ludwig and Rosy Fischer. From the spring of 1925, she could be seen in the domed hall of Moritzburg. This moved the museum into the forefront of German modern art museums.

Under the direction of Alois Schardt , director since 1926, the museum was one of the first to have electric lighting in 1929. Under Schardt, the painting collection was also expanded, including a representative bundle of works by the Russian constructivist El Lissitzky and z. B. the Bauhaus masters Lyonel Feininger , Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee .

The so-called Talamt, the foundation building of the Moritzburg Halle (Saale) art museum in the Moritzburg.

In 1929, Schardt brought Lyonel Feininger to Halle as artist in residence for a commission from the city . A studio had been set up for him on the upper floor of the Moritzburg gate tower. The famous series of his 11 pictures in Halle was bought for the museum in 1931 together with 29 related drawings. Through further important acquisitions, among others from Franz Marc and Oskar Kokoschka , the Halle Museum developed a legendary reputation as one of the most important museums for modern art in Germany by 1933.

In 1931 Charles Crodel completed the mural The Race of the Atalante and the Hippomenes (completed on November 21, 1931) in what was then the university's gymnastics room , now known as the Crodel Hall in the first basement of the west wing of Moritzburg . In 1936 the National Socialists had it whitewashed. The hall has not been open to the public since water damage during the construction of the extension to the art museum from 2005 to 2008 and is to be renovated in the foreseeable future. As part of a research project by the German Federal Environment Foundation , it was investigated how mold- infested building structures can be decontaminated.

The museum in the years of National Socialism

With the takeover of power by the National Socialists and their defamation of modern art as “ degenerate art ”, the Halle collection was in danger. The long-time mayor of the city of Halle (Saale), Richard Robert Rive , who was kind to the museum , has been retired. The direction of the city's art museum was a thorn in the side of his National Socialist successor, Johannes Weidemann . He pursued the segregation of modern art.

Museum director Alois Schardt had become a member of the NSDAP in May 1933 and headed the Halle branch of the Kampfbund for German Culture . In the summer of 1933 he was called to Berlin , where he was supposed to rearrange the presentation of the Modern Department of the National Gallery in the Kronprinzenpalais Unter den Linden . Since he did not do his job to the satisfaction of the National Socialist cultural functionaries, he was sent back to Halle (Saale) in November 1933. From then on he tried to get his early retirement, which he did not succeed until 1936. In Halle (Saale), Schardt fought from 1934 against the mayor's orders to remove modern art from the public tour of the museum, which Schardt refused with various arguments. He was given a leave of absence in February 1935 and Hermann Schiebel , Rector of the Art School in Burg Giebichenstein , was commissioned with the management of the museum. Schiebel cleared the exhibition space of the museum to honor the city's most famous son, Georg Friedrich Handel , on the occasion of his 250th birthday. From November 1935 he presented the museum's collection on a public tour up to the art of 1900, in the attic of the Talamt for an additional fee and entry of name and address in a “guest book” the so-called special presentation “Degenerate Art” could be seen. The most famous visitor to this presentation was the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett , who visited Halle on his trip to Germany at the turn of the year 1936/37.

On July 8, 1937, the works of modern art from the museum collection were confiscated as "degenerate art" in a first wave. From July 19, 1937, numerous paintings were shown at the propaganda show of the same name in Munich and were later sold abroad for foreign currency. On August 28, 1937, the remaining holdings of modern art were confiscated in a second wave. A total of 147 paintings, watercolors and drawings were confiscated. With that, the museum lost its outstanding works, what made up its identity until then.

In order to build up and lose the first modern collection, the museum organized the large special exhibition Bauhaus Meister Moderne in 2019/20 . The comeback .

From the summer of 1939 to 1945, the art journalist and NSDAP functionary Robert Scholz was director of the museum. Under his direction, further of the remaining works of modernism were sold and from then on exhibitions of National Socialist art and propaganda exhibitions took place.

The museum in the GDR

The museum was open until the end of the war, although the remaining collections were either secured in the basement or, for the most part, moved to a tunnel near Bösenburg. Essentially, external special and propaganda exhibitions took place until the end of the war. As early as July 1945 the Halle magistrate decided to buy back the holdings that had been “degenerated”. The first post-war director of the museum, Gerhard Händler , succeeded in 1947/48 in building up a new collection of modern art in the Soviet occupation zone with funds from the Ministry of Education of the State of Saxony-Anhalt , which was in the tradition of the lost collection and at the same time modern Integrated art created between 1933 and 1945, including works by Alexej von Jawlensky , Ernst Wilhelm Nay and Carl Hofer . In this way he founded a new collection with important acquisitions, which today are essential elements of the current collection presentation of the Museum Ways of Modernism. Art in Germany in the 20th century . From October 7, 1948, the newly acquired works were shown to the public in the collection's first post-war presentation. In the autumn of the same year, the so-called formalism discussion began with Alexander Dymschitz's articles in the Daily Rundschau . Dealer was exposed to massive criticism of his museum concept, which I escaped by fleeing via West Berlin to the western occupation zones.

Between 1950 and 1952, under Heinz Arno Knorr, the museum administration was centralized in Saxony-Anhalt. Museums and collections in Halle (Saale), Dessau , Freyburg and other locations were combined to form the so-called State Gallery of Saxony-Anhalt.

With the administrative reform of the GDR in 1952 and the associated dissolution of the states and thus also of the State Gallery of Saxony-Anhalt, the museum was again run independently from 1952 under the name of Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg . Expanding the historical profile of the collection, the Saxony-Anhalt State Coin Cabinet was added in 1950 and the Photography Collection in 1987. Despite state regulation of the cultural sector, the directors of the museum succeeded in collecting the broadest possible spectrum of contemporary art, following its profile. This is how Heinz Schönemann , director between 1958 and 1968, z. B. using the cultural heritage of the GDR to acquire works of so-called proletarian-revolutionary art, works z. B. by Conrad Felixmüller , Karl Völker or Richard Horn . In this way, the museum remained one of the most important museums in the former GDR until 1989/90.

During these years, the Moritzburg building ensemble included not only the art museum but also a television studio for GDR television , the cabaret Die Kiebitzensteiner and rooms used by the Martin Luther University .

The museum in reunified Germany

In 1996 the previously municipal museum was transferred to the sponsorship of the newly founded state of Saxony-Anhalt . In 2003 it was transferred to a foundation , the Moritzburg Foundation - Art Museum of the State of Saxony-Anhalt , to which the Lyonel Feininger Gallery in Quedlinburg was added in 2006 . Since January 1, 2014 the now legally dependent Moritzburg Foundation has been managed in trust by the Saxony-Anhalt Cultural Foundation and the museum operates under the name Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle (Saale) .

Since 1990, the museum has been able to repurchase more than a dozen works that were confiscated as “degenerate” in 1937, most recently a watercolor by Wassily Kandinsky , a watercolor by Christian Rohlfs and a drawing by Lyonel Feininger . In addition, the museum received numerous donations, in some cases entire bundles of drawings, graphics, coins, medals or handicraft objects.

During Katja Schneider-Stief's tenure as director of the museum, two significant events occurred: Hermann Gerlinger's Brücke collection settled on a private permanent loan and the building was expanded. After the university, cabaret and television had left Moritzburg in the 1990s, the Gerlinger Collection provided the necessary arguments for the urgently needed expansion of Moritzburg as a modern art museum. Up until that time, it essentially only had the historical exhibition rooms that had been created between 1904 and 1917. In the 1950s, only part of the first basement of the west wing was added, where handicrafts and medieval art were shown, and in the 1990s the old gymnastics and fencing hall from the 1890s in the north wing of Moritzburg. Thanks to the extension building opened in 2008 by the Spanish team of architects Nieto Sobejano , the exhibition space was doubled. Since then, it has been possible to hold modern special exhibitions that repeatedly tie in with the extraordinary history of the museum, such as a large Feininger exhibition in 2009 or a large Nolde exhibition in 2013 on the occasion of the purchase of Emil Nolde's Last Supper in 1913 .

Gustav Klimt: Portrait of Marie Henneberg, 1902 - one of only four paintings by the Austrian Secessionist in German museums.

The Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle (Saale) in 2001 evaluated as a nationally important cultural institution and that of Paul Raabe published Blue Book included. The Blue Book is a list of nationally important cultural institutions in East Germany and includes 23 so-called cultural lighthouses that are associated with the Conference of National Cultural Institutions .

Thomas Bauer-Friedrich has been running the museum since 2014 . Since then, major special exhibitions on modern art have taken place every year, reaching an ever larger audience, such as the 2016 exhibition Magic of the Moment , which presented the collection of Arthur and Hedy Hahnloser-Bühler from Winterthur , Switzerland , and in 2017 the world's first joint show between the two Expressionists Alexej von Jawlensky and Georges Rouault and in 2018 the only Klimt exhibition outside Austria and the USA in the 100th year of death of the Austrian secessionist. An exhibition with photographs by Karl Lagerfeld is announced for 2020 .

In 2017, the museum and Hermann Gerlinger separated, who has since shown his collection in the Buchheim Museum of Fantasy in Bernried on Lake Starnberg . As a result, a comprehensive presentation of the collection of fine and applied modern art was set up on the first floor of the south, west and north wing, which does not exclude the chapters on art during National Socialism and in the GDR.

Collections

painting

The painting collection includes more than 1,700 works. The development and focus of the collection were largely determined by the two directors Max Sauerlandt and Alois J. Schardt . They formed the collection with a view to the contemporary art of the time, the art of classical modernism . Today the painting collection is diverse on the one hand, but with a clear focus on 20th century art on the other. At its core it is a collection on painting in Germany since the late Gothic period.

graphic

Graphic works have been part of the museum's holdings since it was founded. It was established as an independent collection in 1951 by Hermann Wäscher. In addition to the quantitative increase due to the land reform stocks, the reason for this is likely to be their increased importance. Today the collection comprises around 36,000 sheets from early prints to recent works.

photography

The Moritzburg Art Museum Halle (Saale) is one of the art museums that has its own collection of photography. The collection currently comprises almost 90,000 objects. A specialist library of more than 8,000 volumes was set up for this purpose. After the museum had presented exhibitions of international artistic photography since the 1970s, the opportunity arose in 1986 with the donation of the estate of the photographer Hans Finsler to establish his own collection. Another focus is East German and East European photography since 1945. No other art museum has comparable holdings in this area. This includes two extensive bundles that are part of the collection on permanent loan: the image archive of the former Fotokino-Verlag Leipzig and the collection of the Society for Photography in the Kulturbund der DDR . With the handover of the studio collection of the Fotoforum Kassel by its founder Floris M. Neusüss , the collection was significantly expanded to include West German and international photography from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Comparable collections can only be found in Stuttgart and Winterthur.

plastic

The plastic collection comprises more than 800 works from the Middle Ages to the present day. Its main focus is figurative sculpture of the 19th and 20th centuries. An extensive bundle of medieval carved sculptures with altars and individual figures, baroque epitaphs and spoils from historical buildings in the old salt and residence city of Halle (Saale) introduces the history of the art and cultural landscape of Central Germany.

The garden city of Leuna is located less than 20 km from Halle in the immediate vicinity of the banks of the Saale . A visit to the plastic park is not only recommended via the well-developed Saale cycle path, this “museum in the green” as a branch of the Moritzburg Halle (Saale) art museum can also be reached quickly by tram or Deutsche Bahn.

Crafts and design

With around 8,000 works, the collection provides a unique overview of the development of vessel and object design from the Middle Ages to the present in Europe and Asia. It is the largest collection of its kind in Saxony-Anhalt. Have a special meaning u. a. the Venetian, Dutch and German glasses, the Rhenish and Central German stoneware, the French, Dutch and Central German faience and pewter work, the English and German earthenware, the Meissen, Thuringian and Berlin porcelain and the goldsmith work in Halle. The holdings are currently displayed in the form of a display depot in the study collection in the historic domed hall in the south-east tower of Moritzburg and are accessible as part of guided tours. Important individual objects are part of the permanent collection presentation.

State Coin Cabinet Saxony-Anhalt

The State Coin Cabinet of Saxony-Anhalt is a microcosm of the world of money . The universal collection was created in 1950 from a collection initially oriented towards urban history and today it contains around 50,000 coins and medals and 60,000 banknotes from all epochs and cultures.

The focus of the collection is on the medieval and modern coinage of the central German states, especially today's Saxony-Anhalt. Money was produced here in more than 150 mints for almost 1,000 years. This extraordinarily diverse history is also evident in the Moritzburg itself, in which two mints were active between 1582 and 1641 and from 1669 to 1680.

This focus is expanded with money tokens from all over the world, in addition to those of European powers also important series of Indian and Ottoman coins. The cabinet has one of the most extensive collections of Chinese money in Europe. Banknotes and securities are important evidence of the graphic arts in modern times.

The collection of modern and contemporary German art medals , many of which were designed by well-known sculptors, has a supraregional rank .

Web links

Commons : Kunstmuseum Moritzburg (Halle)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Crodel-Halle in Moritzburg can finally be renovated. In: HalleSpektrum.de - online magazine from Halle (Saale). June 19, 2014, accessed January 4, 2020 .
  2. ^ Christian Eger: Halle: Race against time against mold in the Moritzburg. June 14, 2011, accessed January 4, 2020 .
  3. DBU - Practice-oriented experiments for model decontamination due to anthropogenic action caused by mold colonization on plaster, wall paintings and natural stone in the Crodel Hall of the Moritzburg in Halle - project database. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  4. ^ Halle (Saale) - Handel city: personalities. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  5. Richard Robert Rive. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  6. ^ Christian Philipsen, Thomas Bauer-Friedrich (ed.): Bauhaus Meister Moderne. The comeback . EA Seemann Verlag, Leipzig, ISBN 978-3-86502-432-9 .
  7. Moritzburg celebrates the comeback of modernity. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  8. ↑ The comeback of modernity in Halle - ttt - titles, theses, temperaments - ARD | The first. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  9. Late return to Halle. In: WELTKUNST, the art magazine of ZEIT. November 22, 2019, accessed January 4, 2020 .
  10. Maike Steinkamp: The unwanted legacy: The reception of “degenerate” art in art criticism, exhibitions and museums of the Soviet occupation zone and the early GDR . Walter de Gruyter, 2012, ISBN 978-3-05-006217-4 ( google.de [accessed on January 4, 2020]).
  11. Friedrich Julia, Prinzing Andreas: "This is how you started, without a lot of words": Exhibition and collection policy in the first years after the Second World War . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-035011-1 ( google.de [accessed on January 4, 2020]).
  12. mdr.de: Hidden Museum Treasures: Wassily Kandinsky's "Descent" | MDR.DE. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  13. By Uta Baier, Volksstimme Magdeburg: Spectacular buyback. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  14. ^ Halle: Works of art thought to be lost return to the Moritzburg Museum. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  15. Jonas Nayda: Coup of the century in the art museum: Feininger drawing is a "real stroke of luck". December 6, 2019, accessed January 4, 2020 .
  16. ^ Editing of new Germany: Portfolio of Expressionism (new Germany). Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  17. ^ Another valuable coin donation for the Moritzburg in Halle. In: HalleSpektrum.de - online magazine from Halle (Saale). July 3, 2014, accessed January 4, 2020 .
  18. ^ By Uta Baier, Volksstimme Magdeburg: Money blessing for the art museum. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  19. mdr.de: Museums increasingly dependent on private support | MDR.DE. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  20. - Old and new at eye level. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  21. - A new look at Lyonel Feininger. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  22. ^ Art Museum Moritzburg: Rush of visitors at the opening of the Emil Nolde exhibition. April 20, 2013, accessed January 4, 2020 .
  23. Classical Modernism: Emil Nolde's radical turn. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  24. ^ "Magic of the moment": Van Gogh and the great French in Halle. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  25. ^ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): Kunstmuseum Moritzburg: The magic of the moment | DW | 03/11/2016. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  26. By Uta Baier, Volksstimme Magdeburg: The charm of the first encounter. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  27. The immensely reclined magician. November 30, 2018, accessed January 4, 2020 .
  28. ^ Tilman Krause: Gustav Klimt: Women have never been as erotic as with Klimt . November 26, 2018 ( welt.de [accessed January 4, 2020]).
  29. Rich and famous. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  30. Thomas Ribi: Gustav Klimt: No painter has painted women like he | NZZ . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . ( nzz.ch [accessed January 4, 2020]).
  31. ^ Volksstimme Magdeburg: A look at the exhibition year 2020. Accessed on January 4, 2020 .
  32. mdr.de: Moritzburg Art Museum Halle pays tribute to Karl Lagerfeld with a photo exhibition | MDR.DE. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  33. ^ Volksstimme Magdeburg: Moritzburg shows modernity. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  34. Bilderstreit - A cauldron that is quite colorful. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  35. Andreas Platthaus: East German Museums: But how do you feel about the GDR? ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed January 4, 2020]).
  36. Peter Arlt: Praiseworthy Controversy (New Germany). Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  37. The collection on museum-digital
  38. The collection in the KENOM portal