Villa Obernier

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Villa Obernier as a municipal museum (before 1904)

The Villa Obernier was a villa on the banks of the Rhine in Bonn , which was built from 1849 to 1851 and destroyed in the Second World War. As a foundation of its short-term owner Franz Obernier, it housed Bonn's first and for decades only museum of contemporary art and municipal art museum from 1884 .

history

Villa Bluhme / Obernier

Villa Bluhme with Rheinbogen and Siebengebirge , draft drawing or order picture after completion of the villa

The villa was built for the builder Friedrich Bluhme (1797–1874), a professor at the University of Bonn , according to an attribution by the art historian Olga Sonntag based on a design by the Bonn-born Aachen architect Friedrich Joseph Ark (1807–1878). On November 16, 1847, Bluhme had acquired the property (Coblenzerstraße 5a) of 2027 m² in accordance with the building tax role from the lawyer Gustav von Recklinghausen for 3,500 thalers. It comprised a vineyard (in the area of ​​the former Vinea Domini ) on the so-called Herrenmauer on the Rhine in front of the Koblenzer Tor . The property could be reached from Coblenzerstraße (today Adenauerallee ) via a former public dirt road. Its northern border on the Herrenmauer was formed by the villa of Professor Christian August Brandis , which was also connected to this path , the eastern border was the towpath , the southern border was later Hotel Royal operated by the innkeeper Ermekeil and the western border was the path leading to Coblenzerstraße. In 1848, preparatory work began on the site. In January 1849, these had expanded to include the demolition of existing old walls, the terracing of the embankment and the construction of new walls, pillars, supports and a staircase. On September 10, 1849, Bluhme submitted the building application for the new residential building, and the building permit was granted on September 20 of the same year. The shell should be completed according to the original plan by year end. The Bonn architect Christian von der Emden was entrusted with the planning of the preparatory work concerning at least the outdoor facilities by January 1850 at the latest ; the construction management for the construction of the villa took Bluhme a letter to his friend Friedrich Carl von Savigny from 12 March 1850, according to almost alone. It was completed towards the end of 1851, when the house was plastered and work was still being carried out on the outdoor facilities. It was one of the last villas built in strict classicism on Bonn's banks of the Rhine.

Presumably as a result of the death of Bluhme's widow, her daughter and daughter-in-law rented the villa temporarily from 1877 until the planned sale was completed, including the ground floor in 1878 to Professor Hermann Hüffer . On November 10, with effect from November 22, 1879, the heirs of Bluhmes sold it to Professor Franz Obernier (1839–1888) for 72,000 marks . After the lease had expired, he took over the property on May 15, 1880. Even before moving in, he had applied for and received the building permit for a stable building in March; it was completed in early June. From the same month Obernier had the lining wall on the Rhine raised and a new depression created; this construction work was completed in June 1881. From August to December 1881, the veranda on the ground floor on the Rhine side was replaced with a more massive construction and heightened.

City Museum Villa Obernier

On October 26, 1882, a few days before his death due to cancer, Obernier bequeathed the villa to the city of Bonn in his will with the condition that it be used as a municipal museum with the name “Villa Obernier”. For this purpose he also bequeathed his art collection and a capital of 130,000 marks to her. For the necessary renovation of the villa and the use of its rooms, Obernier made detailed specifications in his will, which, however, were not fully implemented. The interior renovations finally carried out included, among other things, the creation of a spacious entrance hall with columns and Corinthian capitals, the removal of additional walls to create larger rooms, the creation of a dome-like skylight in a glass-iron construction on the upper floor and the closure of the hall of the veranda facing the Rhine through glass.

On May 3, 1884, after the renovation work was completed, the city art museum Villa Obernier was officially opened. Initially, it was mainly used by the “Bonn Society for Literature and Art”. V. “for your club administration, receptions, lectures, author readings and literary lectures. In 1904 the city had an exhibition hall with a skylight added. It was not until 1905 that an administrative board of the museum was established in accordance with the demands of the Bonn Society for Literature and Art. In 1908 the first exhibition followed, which included 90 works "by artists and amateurs" . In 1910 another exhibition was held by a previously newly formed group of artists from Bonn with the participation of Adolfo Hohenstein , Willy Stucke and probably Albert Küppers . Louis Ziercke from Godesberg is said to have participated in an exhibition in 1912 . The first known director of the museum was Professor Friedrich Knickenberg (1863–1932), who also held several other municipal offices. It became known for its collection of Rhenish Expressionists . In 1913 the villa's former stable building was converted into a caretaker's apartment and the upper floor was expanded into a full floor. In 1914 the "Bonner Künstlervereinigung 1914" was founded, which held an exhibition in the museum in the early summer of the year before the start of the First World War . Even after the beginning of the war, exhibitions by various associations took place at least until 1917, in which since then artists from Godesberg have increasingly participated as guests and increasingly viewed the museum as their exhibition venue.

After the end of the war, the museum remained closed for months in 1919, even after that, due to the difficult (financial) situation caused by the crisis and the occupation, its activities were only possible under difficult conditions. The first exhibition was organized in 1920 by the “Bonner Künstlerbund”. The “Bonner Künstlervereinigung 1914 e. V. ”concluded an agreement with the city to allow it to use the museum twice a year for sales exhibitions. From October 2, 1922, the Ernst Moritz Arndt collection of Josef Karl Loevenich (1851) was temporarily stored in the Arndt room of the museum, until a larger exhibition space was found in the form of the Arndthaus on Bonn's banks of the Rhine from 1927 . From the year 1930, 30 pictures are known to have been bought by the museum with a value of 3481 Reichsmarks , of which the City of Bonn took over 2000 Reichsmarks. Knickenberg's successor as museum director after his death in 1932 was Karl Heinz Kobé, who was also director of the city archives. During the National Socialist era , the museum was given a more elaborate facility. Around 1938, at the instigation of Arthur Spiethoff, a room with portraits of the painter Rudolf Schulte in the courtyard ("Schulte-im-Hofe-Zimmer") was set up. Museum director Kobé left Bonn in 1942.

During the Second World War , the villa was completely destroyed on October 18, 1944 in the course of the Allied air war in the most devastating of the bombing raids on Bonn . The exhibits, which are owned by the city, had been relocated before the bombing began, so that they survived the war unscathed. The former property of the villa (most recently Koblenzer Straße 9 ) now belongs entirely to the Hotel Königshof , whose northern border therefore forms the former border to Villa Brandis (demolished in 1905) and whose private driveway is the formerly public path from the former Coblenzerstraße to the Villa Bluhme / Obernier and Brandis matches. At the end of the 1940s, the museum was continued in the “Städtische Kunstsammlungen”, which was initially located in a converted office wing at Rathausgasse 7 (behind Bonn's town hall ) and whose first director, Walter Holzhausen , was appointed. The Bonn Art Museum , which was opened in 1992 in a new building, arose from these art collections .

Exhibitions (selection)

literature

  • Olga Sonntag : Villas on the banks of the Rhine in Bonn: 1819–1914 , Bouvier Verlag, Bonn 1998, ISBN 3-416-02618-7 , Volume 1, pp. 78–81, 98. (also dissertation University of Bonn, 1994)
  • Olga Sonntag: Villas on the banks of the Rhine in Bonn: 1819–1914 , Bouvier Verlag, Bonn 1998, ISBN 3-416-02618-7 , Volume 2, Catalog (1), pp. 71–81. (also dissertation University of Bonn, 1994)
  • Association of August Macke Haus e. V .: Municipal Museum “Villa Obernier”. Foundation of a citizen of Bonn. (= Publication series Verein August Macke Haus Bonn, No. 17) Köllen Druck + Verlag, Bonn 1995, ISBN 3-929607-16-6 . [not yet evaluated for this article]

Web links

Commons : Villa Obernier  - Collection of Pictures

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Olga Sonntag: Villas on the banks of the Rhine in Bonn: 1819–1914 , Volume 1
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Olga Sonntag: Villas on the banks of the Rhine in Bonn: 1819–1914 , volume 2, catalog (1)
  3. ↑ a b Else (Elisa) Krüger (1882–1955) , Meeting Point Art
  4. ↑ a b c d Irmgard Wolf: The generation of the forgotten . In: Godesberger Heimatblätter: Annual issue of the Association for Home Care and Local History Bad Godesberg , Issue 22/1984, Association for Home Care and Local History Bad Godesberg e. V., Bad Godesberg 1985, ISSN  0436-1024 , pp. 24-44 (here: pp. 26 ff.).
  5. ^ Adolf Berchem: On the history of the former "Arndtruhe" and the Arndt Museum in Friesdorf . In: Godesberger Heimatblätter: Annual issue of the Association for Home Care and Local History Bad Godesberg , Issue 22/1984, Association for Home Care and Local History Bad Godesberg e. V., Bad Godesberg 1985, ISSN  0436-1024 , pp. 72-90 (here: pp. 88/89).
  6. ↑ Reiner Pommerin (with the collaboration of Frank-Lothar Kroll, collected by Anneliese Barbara Baum): Bonn between the end of the war and currency reform: memory reports from contemporary witnesses (= City Archives and Scientific City Library: Publications of the City Archives Bonn , Volume 50; Bonner Heimat- und Geschichtsverein : Bonner History sheets , volume 41), Bouvier, Bonn 1991, ISBN 3-416-80678-6 , p. 56.
  7. ^ Daniel Schütz: Walter Rath - The rediscovery of a Godesberg painter . In: Godesberger Heimatblätter: Annual issue of the Association for Heimatpflege und Heimatgeschichte Bad Godesberg eV , ISSN  0436-1024 , Issue 40 (2002), Association for Heimatpflege und Heimatgeschichte Bad Godesberg , Bad Godesberg 2003, pp. 29-47 (here: p. 39 -41).