Leseprobe

25 this end, the institute that was originally to be financed solely by private shareholders was organized in a three-part structure. Along with the museum collection, it was to en­ compass a teaching institute as well as a specialized library. Over the course of its history, the holdings of Berlin’s Kunstgewerbemuseum have been presented at seven different locations. These “Berlin treasure houses” have played a crucial role in shaping the 150-year growth of the museum whose history is being outlined here. The following survey is simultaneously intended to convey an idea about the museum’s functions, which have considera­ bly altered over time. 1867–1873 FORMER DIORAMA OF THE GROPIUS BROTHERS – FOUNDING AND FIRST EXHIBITION The collections of the Deutsches Gewerbe-Museum found their first home in the former diorama of the Gropius Brothers in Stallstraße 7 (the present-day Universitätsstraße) at the corner of Georgenstraße 12, where a permanent exhibition opened in two halls on April 7, 1868. The teach­ ing institute affiliated with the Gewerbe-Museum had already taken up its work there on January 12, 1868. Modeled after Louis Jacques Daguerre’s diorama in Paris, the diorama of the Gropius Brothers was established in 1826/27. Together with two of his brothers, Carl Wilhelm Gropius presented spectacular “panoramas” here until 1850 that employed the effects of reflected light, transmitted light and colored glass to depict scenarios ranging from morning light to a dramatic moonrise. The Deutsches Gewerbe-Museum rented the vacant building in 1867 and initially set up two, later four spaces with an exhibition area of 560 square metres (fig. 1) in the rear wooden annex conceived for the stage and the auditorium as well as in the massive front part of the building. Thanks to the intercession of Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, the Prussian government provided a start-up capital of 45,000 marks to the otherwise privately funded Deutsches Gewerbe-Museum under its superintendent and later (after 1872) administrative director Carl Friedrich Ludwig Grunow (1823–1893; director 1867–1893). This sum was allocated for the acquisition of exemplary contem­ porary works at the fourth Exposition universelle d’art et d’industrie held in Paris in 1867. Among the numerous objects produced by Western European manufacturers purchased there, 430 of them alone came from the Venetian glassblowers Salviati e Compagni. Of considerable signifi­ cance for the holdings of the newly founded museum, whose collection in the beginning was decidedly global in outlook, was also a group of over 1,000 examples of arts and crafts by “half cultivated” peoples. The statutorily intended technological collection initially remained unre­ alized for financial reasons, later also due to the new con­ cept for the collection made after Julius Lessing (1843–1908; Abb. | Fig. 2 Das Kunstgewerbemuseum zu Berlin in den beiden ehemaligen KPM-Gebäuden in der Königgrätzer Straße; Max Klinger, Radierung aus: Das Kunstgewerbe-Museum zu Berlin, Festschrift 1881 The Kunstgewerbemuseum zu Berlin in the two former Royal Porcelain Manufactory buildings on Königgrätzer Straße; Max Klinger, etching from: Das Kunstgewerbe-Museum zu Berlin, Festschrift 1881