collection
The Museum of Cultural History Magdeburg is now home to one of the most important archaeological collections in Saxony-Anhalt, with over 150,000 objects. From prehistoric hand axes to individually crafted walking sticks from the late Middle Ages, the artefacts span 200,000 years of human and civilisational history. As early as the mid-19th century, the core area of the prehistoric and early historical collection was developed in Magdeburg through private initiatives, and these were displayed in the Museum of Natural and Local History at Domplatz 5. For teaching and comparative purposes, the collection was supplemented by purchases and donations of objects from all over Europe. The classical archaeological collections of ancient Greek vases, Roman art, plaster casts, ancient sculptures, jewellery and glass and clay artefacts, which were exhibited in the Kaiser... read more
Magdeburg was one of the most important medieval metropolises in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The city was first mentioned as an important border trading centre in the Diedenhofen Capitulary of Emperor Charlemagne in 805. The time of Emperor Otto the Great, who in 968 established an archbishopric in Magdeburg, brought the city an enormous upswing. A municipal law was developed here that served as a model for hundreds of new cities in Eastern and Southeastern Europe as the “Magdeburg Law”. Magdeburg was an important Hanseatic city. The collection from the Middle Ages documents the history of Magdeburg through a particularly wide variety of original objects that have been added to the collection as a result of systematic excavations in the city centre. Ceramics, glass, leather goods,... read more
The museum's collections contain over 5,000 objects of arts and crafts. The oldest date back to ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, while the most recent come from the 20th century. The arts and crafts collection includes objects made of glass and ceramics, gold and silver, iron, copper, tin, bronze and brass, spanning the entire history of civilisation. Most of the objects bear witness to the development of arts and crafts in the city of Magdeburg, for example, the products of the pewter industry, which can be traced in Magdeburg from the 14th to the beginning of the 20th century. The Rococo ceramics from the Magdeburg faience and earthenware factory Guischard (1756-1839) are aesthetically appealing, as are the Biedermeier and Gründerzeit decorative and everyday tableware from the Buckau porcelain factory... read more
The collection of paintings consists of around 1,000 works from different periods, from the 16th to the 20th century, with a focus on the last 150 years. More than 300 artists are represented in the collection with panel paintings. Among the most important pieces in the collection are pictures by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) and Jan Baergert (early 16th century). 17th-century Dutchmen like Jan Miense Molenaer (1610-1668) or Gillis Rombouts (1630-1678), romantics like Caspar Scheuren (1810-1887) and Wilhelm Steuerwald (1815-1871), as well as renowned 19th-century landscape painters such as Friedrich Preller the Younger (1838-1901), Eugen Bracht (1842-1921) or Richard Kaiser (1868-1941) are also part of the collection, as are numerous portraits and a selection of cityscapes of Magdeburg from several centuries. Hermann Bruse (1904-1953), Heinz Zander (born 1939), Otto... read more
Graphic collections lead a “shadow existence”, for conservational reasons. Stored in metal or wooden cabinets, dust-tight and climate-controlled, prints are considered sensitive cultural artefacts that require special protection. The Magdeburg collection comprises nearly 40,000 drawings and prints from the 15th to 20th century. It is organised chronologically and alphabetically, according to the type of print or drawing. The collection of late 15th- to 18th-century prints includes works by leading artists from Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands, such as Albrecht Dürer, Lucas van Leyden, Bartel Behaim, Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Piranesi, Rembrandt van Rijn, Claude Lorrain and Daniel Chodowietzki. Particularly noteworthy are the vedute of the city of Magdeburg from the 16th to 20th century, including a special view painted by Jan van de Velde. You can find a selection of... read more
The museum's textile collection comprises around 1,250 objects. In addition to textiles by artists, everyday items have also been collected since around 1835: velvet and silk garments worn by the bourgeoisie, lace and batiste from the early 18th century to around 1900, a number of traditional costume items from various regions of Germany dating from around 1896, as well as accessories, handicrafts, toys and small textiles, including a precious collection of silk ribbons from the 18th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, the collection was expanded to include valuable Flemish tapestries, as well as a private collection of dolls dressed in traditional costumes and further Flemish tapestries, textiles for interiors and paraments, such as Italian silk embroidery and oriental prayer rugs from the 19th century. From 1975 onwards,... read more
The collection comprises more than 800 objects from the last six centuries and offers an overview of the European stylistic history of furniture. The foundation for this was laid in 1892 by Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929), who acquired a four-door walnut cabinet from a villa in Genoa. This piece of furniture from the second half of the 16th century, supported by winged sphinxes and decorated with carved masks, palmettes and friezes, was the first piece in the Magdeburg collection and is now a unique treasure in the furniture collection. From baroque floor cupboards to tapestry-embroidered bootjacks from Hamburg, Lübeck and Gdansk, the collection offers a journey through time, through the homes and furnishings of mainly well-to-do families in European regions. The collection includes chests in various shapes for storing textiles... read more
The approximately 1,400 objects in the collection of military artifacts have very different histories. Many come from the old collection of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, but others were delivered by police stations in the GDR, and to this day, citizens still hand over bayonets, bullet casings or collections of shell splinters to the museum as souvenirs of the Second World War. In the context of historical exhibitions, these authentic testimonies illustrate the horror and death of warlike events and the deformation of civilisation and humanity. The collection includes eight courtly wheel-lock rifles for hunting purposes from the second half of the 17th century, 16 percussion and needle-lock rifles, 18 historical pistols, including duelling pistols of exceptional craftsmanship, and 23 infantry rifles from the 19th century, which, according to historical records,... read more
The collection contains a total of 13,300 coins and medals. The main focus is on the coinage of the archbishopric and the city of Magdeburg. Other parts of the collection include coins from ancient Greece to the Migration Period, medieval coins from many German and foreign mints, as well as old German coins. Coins from the German Empire, the German colonies, the Weimar Republic and the GDR round off the collection of German coins. The foreign coins are followed by a collection of thematic medals. The last section is a collection of medals categorised by the artists who created them. The coin collection is joined by a paper money collection (2,280 items), which includes, for example, war emergency money, banknotes from the inflation period, emergency money from municipalities and companies,... read more
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