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Essential
Architecture- Hanseatic city of Lübeck
St. Annen Museum, Lübeck |
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architect
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various |
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location
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Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein, northern
Germany |
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date
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1515 |
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style
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Hanseatic
Brick Gothic |
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construction
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Brick |
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type
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former
Church,
now museum |
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The new Kunsthalle seen through the old
church portal |
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The burning of the St. Annen Monastery in
1843 by C.J. Milde |
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The ruins in the 1870s. |
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St-Annen-Museum
The monastery of Saint Annen in Lübeck-Germany is a
former monastery of the Augustinians. It is now part of the Lübeck's
museum for history of art and culture. It is located near the Saint
Giles Church and next to the synagogue in the south eastern town of
Lübeck.
History of the Building
The monastery and the associated church, which was constructed
rather quirkily due to lack of space, were built 1502 - 1515 in late
brick gothic style. The monastery was used mainly for the accommodation
of unmarried women who were citizens in Lübeck. Following the suggestion
of Lübeck's bishop the monastery and the church were consecrated to
Saint Anna. A few years later the monastery was closed during the
reformation, in 1532 the last of the nuns left. In 1610 a poorhouse was
established, later, parts of the monastery were used as a prison. For
this purpose another wing was built in 1778, the so called Spinnhaus
(Spin house). The care for the poor and the prisoners existed under the
one umbrella.
In 1843 parts of the monastery and the church were burnt out.
During the restoration of the monastery building, the church was torn
down except for a few fragments that stayed in ruin.
Most of the rooms on the ground floor of the monastery are
preserved in their original condition: the cloister, the refectories,
the Remter (the largest room of the monastery, probably the working and
day room of the nuns, from 1733 the refectory of the poorhouse), the
chapter house, and the sacristy of the monastery church. In the south
western corner of the cloister is the calefactory.
Museum for history of art and culture
In 1912 the senate of the Hanseatic city decided to
reconstruct the monastery into a museum. This caused changes of the
ground plan in order to adopt floorboards and wainscots of private
town-houses. The opening of the museum took place in 1915 with some
delay due to World War I. From 1920 to 1933, Carl Georg Heise managed
the museum. In this era the acquisition of the Behnhaus and the assembly
of its collection took place.
Collections
Sacral art of the Middle Ages
Thanks to an early decree of the senate for the
preservation of Memorials of the Antiquity and Art (1818) and the
resulting collection practice of Carl Julius Milde in the 19th century,
the museum houses the largest collection of medieval polyptychs
(altarpieces) in Germany. It possesses the Grönauer Altar, the only
preserved gothic high altar of a church in Lübeck. The other preserved
altars mostly were donated by guilds or merchants to monastery churches,
e.g. to the church of the castle monastery or to the Saint Catherine
Church. Among them are
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the altar of Luke, made by the painter Hermen Rode
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the altar of the traveller to Scania, made by Bernt Notke,
the altar of Saint Anthony, made by Benedikt Dreyer,
the altar of passion, made by Hans Memling and was originally
donated to the Lübeck Cathedral by the Greverade family, and finally
a private altar, the tryptych of the councilman Hinrich Kerckring,
made by Jacob van Utrecht, which found its adventurous way from the
collection of Friedrich Wilhelm Brederlo in Riga to Lübeck.
Another outstanding piece is the Group of Saint George (1504),
which was initially made for the Saint Jürgen chapel at the Ratzeburger
Allee by the sculptor Henning von der Heyde. The work of Hans Kemmer, a
pupil of Cranach, embodies the changes of the reformation and the
Renaissance in Lübeck.
Besides the carved and painted objects, the museum also shows –
like a lapidary – sculptures of the Romanesque and the Gothic, the most
precious piece is the Madonna of Niendorf, which was made by Johannes
Junge and was found in 1926 in a barn in Lübeck-Niendorf. Also
remarkable is the Parable of the Ten Virgins, which was initially set up
in the church of the castle monastery.
Council, guild, and church silverware
A special collection of representative cups, goblets,
pots, utility objects and derivative pieces give praise to the high
technical skills of Lübeck's gold and silversmiths and the wealth of
their customers. The date of origin for these objects is generally
presumed to be after the reformation, due to Lübeck's mayor Jürgen
Wullenwever ordering the melting down of medieval silverware in order to
finance the war against Denmark (Count's Feud).
Lübeck's home decor
The development of the middle-class home decor from the
Renaissance to the Classicism can be seen in several rooms, which are
partially made of Lübeck's private town-houses. In front of the
background of contemporary art — amongst others by Godfrey Kneller and
Thomas Quellinus, who made the bust of the councilman Thomas Fredenhagen
in the baroque high altar of St. Mary's Church —, which reflects the
taste of Lübeck's citizens, and the appropriate decor, made of porcelain
by Fürstenberg and Meissen, one can well emphasize the depicted era. The
greatest influence has a completely conserved baroque floorboard made in
1736. Annexed to this part of the exhibition is a special collection of
Faience from Northern Germany in the upper floor, emphasizing the
manufactures in Kellinghusen, Stockelsdorf, and Stralsund. Further, a
collection of toys sheds light on past time activities of young
Hanseatics. But the oldest hobby horse of the museum is within a group
of children on the Altar der Gertrudenbrüderschaft der Träger (around
1509), which originates from the circle of Henning von der Heyde.
Chamber of paraments
Surely another area worth noting is the chamber of
paraments, which exhibits old liturgical clothes of some of Lübeck's
churches and the main part of the parament treasure of St. Mary's Church
in Gdańsk.
Photo collection
Among the treasures that are not shown to the public is
a collection of photographs. The collection was built up during the
1920s by Carl Georg Heise; included are approx. 450 artistic photos,
among them are 212 photos by Albert Renger-Patzsch. It is the Collection
Showing the History of Photography and the Collection of Ideal
Photography. Both collections were not continued after Heise's
resignation in 1933 and fell in oblivion for a long time. A few years
ago they were brought back into circulation, because the Collection of
Ideal Photography is the most comprehensive collection of photographs of
the New Objectivity in German (amongst others are works are opus by
Renger-Patzsch, Hugo Erfurth, Umbo, and Robert Petschow).
Kunsthalle St. Anna
Besides the St.Annen museum the monastery also contains the
Kunsthalle St. Anna. The architecture of the Kunsthalle, which was built
modernly in 2004 and has the ruins of the former church and the
monastery that burnt down in 1843, was a gift of the Possehl Foundation.
In 2003 the architecture of the Kunsthalle, which was planned by the
architects Konermann Siegmund from Hamburg/Lübeck, received the
quadrennial star prize of the Bund Deutscher Architekten (Federation of
German Architects) of Schleswig-Holstein. The Kunsthalle exhibits modern
art of the 20th century.
Emphasis on self-portraits of modernity
In September 2005, through the medium of Björn Engholm, the
Kunsthalle St. Annen received the inimitable collection of Leonie von
Rüxleben (1920-21/9/05). This collection is the largest of its type in
Germany. This collection enables the Kunsthalle to show approx. 1300
self-portraits of modernity in different exhibitions. But recently there
appeared a conflict between the heirs of von Rüxleben and the museum's
administration concerning the management of the inheritance.
Exhibitions
Exil und Moderne (Exile and Modernity): 50 classical
exhibits of classical modernity from the collection of the Washington
University in St. Louis, Missouri, September 4, 2005 and January 29,
2006.
Bibliography
Rode's Altar of Luke
Notke's Altar of the traveller to ScaniaKarl Schaefer, Führer
durch das Museum für Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte zu Lübeck, 1915
Max Hasse, Der Lübecker Passionsaltar Hans Memlings als Denkmal
mittelalterlicher Frömmigkeit in: Vom Lübecker Dom, Lübeck 1958, p. 33
ff
Wolfgang J. Müller, Lübeck um 1250 - Kunsthistorische
Betrachtungen zum neuen Stadtmodell in: Politik, Wirtschaft und Kunst
des staufischen Lübeck, Lübeck 1976, p. 51 ff
Jürgen Wittstock [Ed.], Kirchliche Kunst des Mittelalters und der
Reformationszeit: die Sammlung im St.-Annen-Museum (Museum catalogues of
Lübeck, Vol. 1). Lübeck: Museum für Kunst u. Kulturgeschichte, 1981,
ISBN 3-9800517-0-6
Hildegard Vogler, Madonnen in Lübeck, Museum für Kunst und
Kulturgeschichte, Lübeck 1993
Die neue Sicht der Dinge. Carl Georg Heise's collection of
photographs from the 1920s. Catalogue of the exhibition 1995, published
by the Hamburger Kunsthalle and the Museum für Kunst und
Kulturgeschichte of the Hanseatic city Lübeck.
Anna Elisabeth Albrecht: Steinskulptur in Lübeck um 1400:
Stiftung und Herkunft. Reimer: Berlin 1997. ISBN 3-496-01172-6
Hildegard Vogler, Das Triptychon des Hinrich und der Katharina
Kerckring von Jacob van Utrecht, Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte,
Lübeck 1999
Ulrich Pietsch, Die Lübecker Seeschiffahrt vom Mittelalter zur
Neuzeit, Lübeck 1982, ISBN 3-9800517-1-4 (exhibition catalogue)
Thorsten Rodiek, Kunsthalle St. Annen in Lübeck Ed. Herbert Perl,
Junius Verlag Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-88506-537-1
Uwe Albrecht, Jörg Rosenfeld, and Christiane Saumweber: Corpus
der Mittelalterlichen Holzskulptur und Tafelmalerei in
Schleswig-Holstein, Band I: Hansestadt Lübeck, St. Annen-Museum. Kiel:
Ludwig, 2005. ISBN 3933598753
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links
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in German
In German and English
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www.essential-architecture.com
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