Historical Museum (Bayreuth)

 

Location: Kirchplatz 6

Tel. +49 0921/ 764 0111

Open: 10am- 5pm Tue- Sun Sept- June

10am- 5pm July- Aug

The Bayreuth Historical Museum, initially called the "City Museum", is the oldest museum in the Upper Franconian city of Bayreuth. It has an eventful history, the goal of which was to preserve and make public local and regional cultural assets by citizens interested in culture in cooperation with the city administration. In 1997 it was awarded the Bavarian Museum Prize.

 

History

The founding of the Bayreuth Historical Museum is based on the minutes of a meeting of the "Magistrate of the royal district capital of Bayreuth" on December 5, 1894. This was preceded by a memorandum by Bayreuth citizens and associations. A museum fund was set up and bequests and donations allowed the historical holdings, for which a depot was set up in 1912, to grow; from 1924 the treasures in the rooms of the New Castle were made accessible to the public.

The Second World War and looting after the end of the war in 1945 caused irreparable losses. In 1960, the museum in the east wing of the New Palace was reopened under the supervision of the architect Hermann Rothenbücher. From 1964, librarian Wilhelm Müller presented the historical material in a new way, followed by historian Sylvia Habermann from 1981, both of whom also successively managed the city archive. Under Sylvia Habermann, the museum was expanded with further achievements until 2017. This includes the important Otto Burkhardt private collection (permanent loan) of faience from the porcelain manufactory founded in 1715 in Sankt Georgen, a district of Bayreuth since 1811.

Over the years it has been shown time and again that the historical treasures were still insufficient or that many things were only housed in the depot. Therefore, at the end of 1984, an association of “Friends of the City Museum” (later “Friends of the Historical Museum”) was founded, which soon had around 600 members. When the Bayreuth city council decided to consider the premises of the old Latin school next to the town church for the final accommodation, the museum temporarily moved to the Lüchauhaus on Kanzleistrasse. Used as a fire station until November 1988, the old historic building of the Latin school, from which two bronze styli from the 12th/14th Century belong to the exhibition, are extensively renovated. In 1996 the time had come; the museum was opened there under the direction of Sylvia Habermann and in 34 exhibition rooms on 1200 square meters on three floors, diverse aspects of the more than 800-year history of Bayreuth, including the important part of the history of the Margraves of Brandenburg, could be presented.

Just one year after the reopening, the (now:) "Historical" Museum Bayreuth received the Bavarian Museum Prize (1997). In the years that followed, Sylvia Habermann “successively reviewed the inventory in over 90 special exhibitions and made it accessible to visitors from different perspectives” (M. Ruppert). In the meantime, the premises and their content have received further growth.

 

Exhibition

The history and development of Bayreuth from the late Middle Ages to the 20th century is shown on the ground floor of the museum, and there is also a model of the city as it looked in 1763. The first floor is dedicated to the art and cultural history of the margrave period of the 17th and 18th centuries. B. heard an elaborately decorated sedan chair from the 18th century. In addition to the faience collection (see above), handicrafts from Bayreuth and the surrounding area, products from the glassworks in the Fichtelgebirge and stoneware potters from Creußen, as well as paintings, handicrafts and early industrial products from the Biedermeier period and the late 19th century are on display on the upper floors. These include musical instruments such as a clavichord by Christian Gottlob Hubert (1756) or a 7-key maple flute by the Bayreuth instrument maker Johann Simon Stengel (~1830).

A special rarity is the self-portrait of the court painter Heinrich Bollandt (1578-1653) and his portraits of the margrave family from the 17th century – permanent loans from the historical chancellery library at the University of Bayreuth.