Leseprobe

15 regarding collecting. Emerging in the course of seculariza­ tion were collections of medieval art containing primarily handicraft objects, among them the Musée des Monuments français in Paris, founded by Alexandre Lenoir (1761–1839). There, after the French Revolution, it was a question of securing works of medieval art as documents of the national past and for the sake of posterity. For their installation in the convent of the Petits Augustins, Lenoir to begin with had everything arranged strictly chronologically. Established since the late 18th century as well were national collections of models and products such as the Conservatoire des Arts et des Métiers, established in Paris in 1794, and the k. k. Fabriksprodukten-Kabinett in Vienna in 1807. Founded in Prussia as early as 1796 was a Warenkabinett (gallery of products), but it seems not to have remained in operation for very long. The function of this institution was to assemble collections of samples and exemplary factory products in order, finally, to document national progress and know- how in the increasingly important realm of industrial manufacturing. Such knowledge transfer was a driving factor in the establishment of museums of applied arts. The 1840s saw the strengthening of initiatives designed to promote trade through international exchanges involving Germany, Eng­ land, and France. Initiated in Stuttgart in 1848, for example, was one of the first forerunners of the later museums of applied arts, the Centralstelle für Gewerbe und Handel (center for trade and commerce) of the Kingdom of Würt­ temberg. The basic idea was to establish a comprehensive institute designed to link art, industry, and natural resources with one another. Alongside a variety of industrial and artistic training facilities was a wide-ranging collection of samples that began with raw materials, tools, and machin­ ery, and extended to physics or horological instruments, all the way to weavings, embroidery, and other handcrafted objects. This signaled the birth of a concept which – with the establishment of the South Kensington Museum, later the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London in 1852 – would become the successful template for numerous museums founded throughout the continent. In Prussia, Alexander von Minutoli (1806–1887) followed a similar principle when, as early as 1858, he assembled a collection of samples consisting of 18,000 objects on a commission from King Frederick William IV, and made it publicly accessible as an applied arts teaching collection in Liegnitz Palace (Legnica, Poland). Von Minutoli arranged his exhibits as follows: high-quality pieces were arranged according to epoch, the others according to material (glass, iron, linen, wool), thereby illustrating production processes from the preparation of raw materials all the way to the completion of the finished product (fig. 1). This approach to display influenced early museums of applied arts in decisive ways. The greater part of von Minutoli’s collection was acquired by the Prussian government in the years 1858/62 and 1869, and was transferred to the Deutsches Gewerbe-Museum zu Berlin slightly later with support from Crown Princess Victoria (1840–1901). Victoria (fig. 2), the daughter of the English Prince Consort Albert (1819–1861) and wife of the Prussian Crown Prince Frederick William (1831–1888), who was protector of the royal museums, and later Emperor Frederick III, decisively shaped the genesis and early development of the Deutsches Gewerbe-Museum zu Berlin. For this reason, too, the later Kunstgewerbemuseum was oriented in a variety of ways toward its London model, the South Kensington Museum. Considered initially during the founding phase of the Berlin museum was an institute with two departments. Envisioned for the first was a museum of ornamental arts with associated schools. The second department, devoted to science and technology, would have presented all raw materials, production phases, and construction materials, and included a collection of models of outstanding archi­ tectural monuments – even foodstuffs were to have been given due consideration. But in Berlin, as earlier in London, the project was ultimately restricted to the domain of the decorative arts. Occasionally, material samples were incor­ porated into the collection, as in 1867, with porphyry blocks in various colors from Sweden, or in 1880, with a collection of wood samples from various trees species found on the Japanese island of Kiusin. The aim here was a central institute that would have provided a universal overview of the development of the applied arts in various regions and historical periods. In his acquisition policies, nonetheless, Julius Lessing (1843–1908), as inaugural director, excluded works of classical antiquity, ethnological artifacts, weapons, and coins, arguing that these were already on view in other museums in the city. Initial efforts toward assembling the collection were mentioned in late 1867 in the publication “Kunstchronik.” Cited specifically was the sum of 15,000 thalers, provided