Leseprobe

23 Berlin Treasure Houses LOTHAR LAMBACHER A Brief Chronicle of the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin The Princess Royal Victoria (1840–1901), the eldest daughter of Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, played a crucial role in the efforts concerning the establishment of an applied arts museum in Berlin. In 1858, she married Prince Frederick of Prussia, who in 1861 would become Crown Prince Frederick William (1831–1888). Victoria was well aware of the enormous impact that the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the 1862 International Exhibition as well as the founding of the South Kensington Museum – the present-day Victoria and Albert Museum – in 1852 had on the growth of the British economy and she was determined to initiate a similar development in Prussia. At her instigation, the statistician and economist Hermann Schwabe (1830–1874) published a groundbreaking study titled “Die Förderung der Kunst-Industrie in England und der Stand dieser Frage in Deutschland” (The Advancement of Art Industry in England and the State of this Question in Germany) in 1866. In it, Schwabe recommended that Prus­ sia also establish an institution modeled after London’s South Kensington Museum. A corresponding public appeal for the founding of a museum for the decorative arts in Berlin was already published on December 1, 1866. One of the endeavor’s most resolute promoters and indeed its true spiritus rector was the architect Martin Gropius (1824–1880). Under the chairmanship of Victor I, Duke of Ratibor, Prince of Corvey (1818–1893), a private corporation “Deutsches Gewerbe-Museum zu Berlin” was constituted on March 25, 1867. Its statutes were confirmed by royal decree on August 5, 1867, which indeed can be regarded as the true founding date of Berlin’s Kunstgewerbemuseum, the first of its kind in Germany and the third in Europe. The idea behind this then new type of museum was in keeping with contemporary economic necessities. With the growth of industrial mass production and the international exposi­ tions that had been taking place since 1851, the skilled crafts found themselves in a hitherto unknown competitive situation. According to the statutes, the primary task of the Deutsches Gewerbe-Museum was to “make the resources of art and science available to tradesmen.” A technical scien­ tific collection of samples, products, and models was planned in addition to a “museum of ornamental art,” both of which were intended as collections of models and pat­ terns to advance an awareness for quality in the trade and industry sectors, thus raising their competitive standing. To