City Museum State Capital Düsseldorf
The Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf is a city history and city theory oriented museum in the North Rhine-Westphalian state capital Düsseldorf . It is housed in Palais Spee in Carlstadt on the southern edge of the historic city center.
history
Founded in 1874 as a historical museum by the city council, it was housed in the Hondheim Palace on Akademiestraße (now Hafenstraße). The impetus for founding the museum was the donation of oil paintings from the estate of the Count of Stutterheim in October 1873.
In the period from 1879 to 1902, Prince Georg of Prussia , protector of the Historical Museum, influenced the location, collection and presentation. Thanks to his donations and his legacy, the collection areas were expanded and a portrait collection expanded. And at the end of November 1879, the Historical Museum moved into the gallery building of the palace on Burgplatz . Ludwig Heitland was curator from 1884 to 1893 .
In 1897 the company moved to the former warehouse of the so-called Reuterkaserne .
From 1906 to 1912 Rudolf Weynand was part of the director of the Historical Museum of the City of Düsseldorf. From 1913 to 1926, Karl Koetschau , director of the Düsseldorf City Art Collection, today's Museum Kunstpalast , was also director of the Hetjens Museum and the Historical Museum. From 1914 a "war collection" was built up.
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From 1926/27 to 1935 Paul Wentzcke , director of the city archives since 1912, was also head of the historical museum , and the personal union with the city art collections was canceled. From November 1927, the Historical Museum , which was connected to the City Archives in 1928 , was housed in the then Kunstgewerbemuseum at Friedrichplatz 3–7, today's Grabbeplatz . Up to this point in time, the city's collections were spread all over Düsseldorf. By 1930 the departments “Theater History”, “Düsseldorf as Garrison City”, “Düsseldorf Carnival”, Düsseldorf and its shipping , a “Rifle Room” and a furniture collection (from 1927) were built up. In 1933 the Historical Museum was named the City Museum .
When the city archive and museum separated on October 10, 1933, Hans Brückner (1887–1970), a member of the DVFP since 1922 and from 1923 to 1925, then again from 1931 in the NSDAP , was entrusted with the management of the city museum . He was given the task of setting up a "Germanic department" there, which was to be part of a complete redesign of the house in the National Socialist sense. From 1935 to 1946 Brückner was director of the city museum . In May 1935, the "Germanenschau" department was opened, with a traveling exhibition from 1938. On July 5, 1935, Brückner opened an exhibition of the oldest collections on the history of navigation on the Rhine with the help of Heinrich Etterich, the Düsseldorf port director at the time. This collection was initially presented to the public temporarily in 1936 during the Düsseldorf Harbor Day in the city museum , and from 1937 permanently in the "Green Vault" of the planetarium . In 1978, the city council of Düsseldorf decided to permanently house the shipping museum in the castle tower .
The building was destroyed in the Second World War , but the core of the collection was retained through outsourcing. From 1946 to 1950, Karl Steinebach was director of the city museum . Under his leadership, the museum moved in 1948 to the first floor in the courtyard 2 (today NRW-Forum ). In 1955 the move to Schloss Jägerhof took place under the direction of Gert Adriani , director of the city museum from 1950 to 1958 , and from 1954 director of the art museum .
From 1958 Meta Patas , director of the art museum, took over the provisional management. In 1963 the personal union with the art museum ended. Under the director Meta Patas, the museum moved to the former Palais Spee (1st construction phase) and was renamed the City History Museum .
In 1977 the west wing in Palais Spee (2nd construction phase) was extended. Director Wieland Koenig (1979–2002) pushed the development of the collection on art during the resistance and the time of National Socialism . In 1980 it was renamed the City Museum .
On June 2, 1991, the city museum was reopened after completion of the extension by Niklaus Fritschi (3rd construction phase). On September 2nd, 2003 Susanne Anna took over the management of the house. After a nine-month closure, the new concept was presented to the public.
architecture
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On June 2, 1991 the extension of the city museum designed by the architect Niklaus Fritschi was opened. Like the Palais Spee, the new building is oriented towards the park behind the museum. The park was laid out by the garden architect Maximilian Friedrich Weyhe . Fritschi's open architecture was continued in the development of the new concept in 2003. The coherent structure created in the postmodern architecture of the extension building served as the basis for the conversion of the ground floor area in the extension of the Düsseldorf City Museum to become the “City Theoretical Forum”. The changes were made necessary by the changed requirements for function and spatial representation as well as a changed understanding of museum architecture and the involvement of the museum users.
Collections
Collections of prehistory and early history and older city history
The collection covers the time frame from the Stone Age to the late 18th century. The focus is on the historically significant epoch of the United Duchies of Jülich-Kleve-Berg (16th and 17th centuries) and the reign of the Dukes of Jülich-Berg from the Palatinate-Neuburg family (17th to 18th centuries). The holdings include archaeological finds, paintings, graphics, sculptures, objects of applied art and archive material.
Since the history museum was founded, the large number of portraits has been a clear focus of the collection. Particularly noteworthy are the portraits of Duke Wilhelm the Rich (1591) (inv.no.B 4) and his son Johann Wilhelm (1605) ( inv.no.B 8) by Johan Malthain on oak wood . Other important portraits of the rulers of Elector Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz , or Jan Wellem for short, come from Jan Frans van Douven . The painter, particularly valued by Johann Wilhelm, portrayed him in 1708 in jewelry armor and surrounded by the insignia of power (Inv.No.B 820) as well as posthumously the prince who was marked by illness (Inv.No.B 174). In addition to the portraits of the rulers, there are portraits of famous scientists in sovereign services, such as that of Gerhard Mercator (inv.no.B 140). There is also a very extensive collection of copper engravings. The copperplate engravings by Frans Hogenberg , which illustrate the wedding of Duke Johann Wilhelm von Jülich-Kleve-Berg to Jakobe von Baden in 1585, occupy a prominent position in the presentation of the collection . The engravings, some of which are hand-colored, not only depict the sequence of the eight-day festival, but also provide important topographical image sources from the 16th century with views of the Düsseldorf Rhine front or the palace. (Inv.No.DV 1-DV 32)
The Cologne cupboard from the 16th century is representative of the furniture collection. The richly inlaid oak cabinet (Inv.No. M 50) gives an impression of the upscale bourgeois living culture of the 16th century in Düsseldorf. Two flintlock pistols by Hermann Bongard (Inv.No.W 25 and W 26) or the silver salt bowl by Conrad Hadernach (Inv.No.S 1005) exemplify the high quality of Düsseldorf handicrafts around the electoral court around 1700.
Archeology has played a special role since the city museum was founded. Collectors such as Carl Guntrum and Constantin Koenen handed over their holdings to the house, in the 20th century curator Franz Rennefeld took part in excavations in Düsseldorf and current excavation finds can still be exhibited on permanent loan from the Institute for Monument Protection. The spectrum includes objects as diverse as a cheese bowl from the Roman Moers-Asberg camp (Inv.No. A 123) or a urinal glass for medical diagnosis from the 16th century.
Although archives from the 19th and 20th centuries are recorded in the inventories of the city museum, there are also high-ranking items from the period before 1800. The letter from the traveling knight Arnold von Harff to his sovereign Sybille von Jülich, dated 1498, deserves special attention -Berg , to which Harff enclosed a pilgrimage ring from Jerusalem (inv. No.). In addition to the objects described, several models are noteworthy, such as the development stages of the Düsseldorf Palace from the 14th to the 18th century.
19th century collections
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The beginning and end of the 19th century collection mark the French occupation of the city from 1795 and the industrial and commercial exhibition for Rhineland, Westphalia and neighboring districts in 1902. In the "long" 19th century , Düsseldorf experienced enormous development, from a small one Marginal residential city to a modern industrial city. The importance of this period is reflected in the fact that the department holds the city museum's largest inventory of objects of all kinds, works of art, objects of applied art and everyday objects. Numerous objects document the time of French rule in the Rhineland. The focus is on Napoleon Bonaparte , with portraits, souvenirs of his visit to Düsseldorf and caricatures turned against him. The change of the city from a small residence to a military-dominated garrison in the middle of the 19th century, followed by the rapid development into an industrial city, characterizes the collection: with pictures of the garrison chiefs from the Prussian royal family and of industrial tycoons, products “made in Düsseldorf ”and memories of the major trade exhibitions of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which can be seen as the forerunners of the Düsseldorf trade fair . Paintings include Andreas Achenbach's Rhenish industrial landscape and Emil Hünten's Lower Rhine Fusilier Regiment No. 39 .
The social upheavals of the industrial revolution are also visible in the collection, not least through portraits of such diverse and influential personalities as Theodor Fliedner , Florence Nightingale , Sophie von Hatzfeldt and Ferdinand Lassalle . The museum also has a large collection of caricatures from the Vormärz and the revolution of 1848/49 .
Düsseldorf has been an important art center since the 1820s. With Christian Dietrich Grabbe , Carl Immermann and last but not least Heinrich Heine , important and very different protagonists of German literature are represented in the collection. Portraits, furniture and the last grand piano played by Robert Schumann are reminiscent of the composers Norbert Burgmüller , Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy , Clara and Robert Schumann . The collection with the holdings of the Düsseldorf School of Painting has a special focus , from which a frieze of paintings with the human life cycle and the seasons from the house of the academy director Wilhelm von Schadow stands out.
Collections 20./21. century
The year 1902 with the first internationally significant Düsseldorf exhibition, the industrial and commercial exhibition for Rhineland, Westphalia and neighboring districts, combined with a German national art exhibition , marked the beginning of the 20th/21 collection. Century that extends to the present day.
The focus of the collection from the period up to 1945 is the Düsseldorf art scene during the Weimar Republic and under National Socialist rule, especially the modern artist groups of the 1920s / 1930s Young Rhineland , Rhine Group and Rhenish Secession . The works of these groups are not only relevant in terms of art history, but also in terms of their interplay with the political and social developments of these years as alternative “city designs”.
These artists' associations included Arthur Kaufmann , Adolf Uzarski , Karl Schwesig , Heinrich Nauen , Johann Baptist Hermann Hundt , Gert Wollheim , Otto Dix and Theo Champion , whose works are represented in the collection. Kaufmann's painting “Die Zeitgenossen” (1925), on which the protagonists of the Düsseldorf art scene are assembled in a group picture, is one of the key exhibits in the 20th/21 collections. Century.
A themed room deals with the gallery owner and sponsor of the young Rhineland, Johanna Ey , to whom the 2009 special exhibition Ich - Johanna Ey was dedicated. The painters Julo Levin and Franz Monjau, who were persecuted and murdered by the National Socialists, also have their own rooms . The Julo Levin collection also includes almost 2000 drawings by Jewish children from the time of National Socialism, which were created in Levin's art and drawing classes in Düsseldorf and Berlin, a selection of which is on display.
In 1946 Düsseldorf became the capital of the newly founded state of North Rhine-Westphalia . Objects such as clothing, household items, photos, official and private documents, plans and models for the reconstruction of the city, which was badly destroyed in the war, as well as artistic confrontations with the National Socialist tyranny represent the post-war period. As a financial and administrative center, as a city of the arts, fashion, trade fairs and communication, the city gained supraregional importance in the 1950s and 1960s.
From the Düsseldorf art of those years, the collection has a focus on the Junge Realisten, founded in Düsseldorf in 1956 . This group of artists included Germán Becerra , Hans-Günther Cremers , Thomas Häfner , Hannelore Köhler , Wolfgang Lorenz and Willi Wirth . The tin drum picture by Germán Becerra and Franz Witte (1957/58), which, like Die Zeitgenossen , portrayed key artists on the Düsseldorf scene - including the writer Günter Grass - was acquired for the collection in 2009. One room is dedicated to the subject of Joseph Beuys and Düsseldorf . Beuys' activities in the city in which he lived from the beginning of his studies at the art academy (1974) until his death (1986) is documented with archive materials, documents, newspapers, magazines, photos and writings by the artist.
Photographic collection
When the City Museum was founded, photography was already a natural part of everyday culture. That is why the beginnings of the photographic collection go back to the time when the museum was founded. For decades, however, the photographs were not treated as a special collection. Only a general re-evaluation of the medium of photography since the 1970s established the creation of the photographic collection. Their holdings include around 30,000 photographs. Among them are incunabula from photographic history: daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, salt paper negatives and positives from the 1840s and 1850s. Two focal points determine the collection, views of Düsseldorf and portraits. In accordance with their affiliation to a history museum, their importance is based on the documentation of the architecture, the cityscape and the cultural, political and everyday life in the city. At the local level, the historical development in Germany is comprehensible, the development of a large city in the early days, the cultural heyday during the Weimar Republic and National Socialism are just as extensively documented as the war destruction and reconstruction. In addition to a large number of anonymous works, the photographic collection includes works by the Söhn family of photographers, Erwin Quedenfeldt, Ruth Lauterbach-Baehnisch, August Sander, Dirk Alvermann and Thomas Struth .
Graphic collection
The holdings of the graphic collection range from the 16th century to the present day. They cover the classic subject areas of a city museum: maps, city plans, topographical views, portraits and events. The graphic collection also contains an extensive collection of silhouettes and artist graphics with reference to city history, as well as city and state historical documents, documents, autographs and family estates. Drawings, watercolors and prints from the Lauterbach Archive represent an independent collection. In addition to the works of Carl Lauterbach himself, this includes works that he received from fellow artists, e. E.g. the etching Kriegskrüppel by Otto Dix and a lithograph by Max Ernst .
Conception
The city museum repositioned itself in 2004. Its subject is the city as a dynamic social, cultural and spatial structure that constitutes society. The city museum not only manages, maintains and shows its objects, but also presents, researches and communicates processes relevant to city theory and city history with them. With its collection, it provides a basis for the planning of living spaces for urban people. This is just as fragmentary and incomplete as the city's history itself and offers the opportunity to enter into dialogue.
PC workstations are therefore set up at various points in the collection, where information can be called up, questions can be worked out, exhibits and their urban history can be researched.
In addition, project rooms are set up on the various floors. Current projects in local and global urban development that result from the historical circumstances of the city, the collections or special exhibitions of the city museum are discussed here. The museum newspaper informs the visitor about the various projects in the project rooms.
A documentation room is dedicated to the subject of Joseph Beuys and Düsseldorf . His work in Düsseldorf and at the art academy is illuminated here.
The questioning museum
The city museum sees itself as a questioning museum. It has therefore created a comment level that enables visitors to communicate professionally and unconventionally. Visitors have the opportunity to come into contact with the scientists via a communication form. The completed forms are processed regularly.
The questioning museum takes an active approach to the exhibit and therefore needs a variable display that allows interventions: the grooved surface of the showcase floor and the plug-in system of the lettering become a context and information carrier with the option to supplement. The mobile visitor service, a team of museum education staff, actively approaches visitors and is available for advice and specialist information.
The Urban Theoretical Forum
In the middle of the museum is the city theory forum as a place for discussion on the subject of "city and its people". The forum comprises the Ibach-Saal, the two foyers and the terraces behind and in front of the museum. In addition to a reading corner, a specialist range of international literature on urban history is offered for sale. The forum with the café and the museum garden designed by Maximilian Friedrich Weyhe is also a meeting point for clubs, parties and events.
The city museum as a discussion platform
The city museum sees itself as a platform that offers its citizens something. The exhibits with their questions contain offers and opportunities to get involved, to discuss and help shape. All age groups are invited to use the extensive program of events as a platform for discussing their ideas and interests. This begins with participating in the research and presentation of the collections and ends with the conception and organization of one's own projects and exhibitions. From the birthday room , which enables associations and private individuals to present their work and their ideas, to the Young Generation Lounge to the keyworkers , civic actors and mediators in post-professional life: communities have long since formed in and around the museum that use the house as a platform for their commitment. The scientific work of the museum is also made transparent in the context of cooperation projects with citizens and through the large computer-stored archive.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ History of the Düsseldorf City Museum: 1897 move to the former warehouse, Reuterkaserne 1
- ^ City Museum, Sights of the City, in the address book of the city of Düsseldorf 1938, Grabbeplatz 3/5, pp. 2-3 .
- ↑ Stephan Laux : Between traditionalism and "economic science": The Düsseldorf history association and the Rhenish history associations in National Socialism. Reprint from Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte , Volume 141/142, 2005/2006 (PDF) , pp. 128–129
- ↑ Brief history of the SchifffahrtMuseum ( Memento of the original from March 9, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ State capital Düsseldorf: d: kult. Retrieved March 28, 2019 .
Coordinates: 51 ° 13 ′ 19.7 ″ N , 6 ° 46 ′ 10.1 ″ E