The Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle (Saale) is the art museum of the state of Saxony-Anhalt in the Moritzburg in Halle (Saale), Germany. It emerged from Städtisches Museum für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe der Stadt Halle (Saale) (lit.: Municipal Museum of Arts and Crafts of the City of Halle (Saale)), founded in 1885. In its history, it has developed into one of the most important museums for the visual and applied arts of the era of modernism in Germany.
Museum history From the foundation to the First World War Today's Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle (Saale) was founded in 1885 as Städtisches Museum für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe der Stadt Halle (Saale) (lit.: Municipal Museum of Arts and Crafts of the City of Halle (Saale)) in the building of the old Eich- und Waagamt in the south of the historic old town of Halle.
In 1904, the second location of the museum was opened in the ruins of the former archbishop's residence, the Moritzburg, in the northwestern part of the historic old town centre. For this purpose, a historicizing replica of the Thalamt building on the Hallmarkt was erected in the south wing of the Moritzburg ensemble, which had been destroyed since the 17th century. The Renaissance building, seat of the Halle Count of Salt, was demolished in 1881, the two historic rooms (banqueting room and courtroom), unique examples of mannerist interior design in Central Germany, were recovered in their original form and integrated into the upper floor of the new building in the Moritzburg. In 1904, the Thalamt in the Moritzburg, built according to designs by Karl Rehorst, was opened as a museum. By 1913, the construction of the south-west bastion and the so-called Chemins de ronde in the east wing to the city had been completed. It was not until 1917 that the impressive domed hall in the southwest bastion was completed as a barrel-vaulted exhibition hall. Until 1920, the rooms in the old Eich- und Waagamt functioned as a gallery, primarily for contemporary art, and the rooms in the Thalamt building in the Moritzburg for the presentation of the Old Masters and the arts and crafts collection.
In 1908, Max Sauerlandt was appointed as the first administrator of the municipal collections paid by the city administration; from 1910 he was officially director of the museum. Sauerlandt recognised that he could not compete with the large collections in Berlin, Dresden or Munich, but he could turn the museum into something special by focusing on the art of the turn of the century and the present.
Until the outbreak of the First World War, he acquired important collections of works by Max Liebermann, Max Slevogt, Lovis Corinth, the young Max Beckmann, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Emil Nolde and Christian Rohlfs, among others. A year later, the purchase of Emil Nolde's painting The Last Supper in 1913 caused a national museum dispute over the question of whether a museum was entitled to acquire contemporary art. The opposite position to Sauerlandt was taken by Wilhelm von Bode, director of the Royal Picture Gallery in Berlin.
Weimar Republic In 1919, Max Sauerlandt moved to Hamburg as director of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe. Nevertheless, he continued to determine the development of the Halle Museum until 1926, when Sauerlandt's successor Burkhard Meier was in office for only one year. In 1921, his contract was not renewed after the end of the probationary year. As a result of the Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic, the director's position was removed from the municipal budget. The management of the museum was shared by the Halle's Mayor Richard Robert Rive, the city planning officer Wilhelm Jost and the acting director of the museum, Paul Thiersch, founding rector of the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design.
In 1920, the museum had to vacate the premises in the old Eich- und Waagamt. Since 1921, all collections have been concentrated and exhibited in the Moritzburg. In the autumn of 1924, Max Sauerlandt brokered the acquisition of 24 expressionist works from the collection of Ludwig and Rosy Fischer. From spring 1925 it could be seen in the domed hall of the Moritzburg. This put the museum in the first row of German modern art museums.
Under the direction of Alois Schardt, director since 1926, the museum was one of the first ever to receive electric lighting in 1929. Under Schardt, the painting collection was also expanded, among other things, with a representative collection of works by the Russian constructivist El Lissitzky and, for example, the Bauhaus masters Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee.
In 1929, Schardt brought Lyonel Feininger to Halle as Artist-in-residence for a commission from the city. A studio had been set up for him on the upper floor of the gate tower of Moritzburg. The famous series of his 11 Halle paintings was purchased for the museum in 1931 together with 29 associated drawings. Through other important acquisitions, including those by Franz Marc and Oskar Kokoschka, the Halle Museum earned a legendary reputation as one of the most important museums for modern art in Germany by 1933.
In 1931, Charles Crodel completed the mural Race of Atalanta and Hippomenes (completed on 21 November 1931) in what was then the university's gymnastics hall, now known as the Crodel-Halle in the first basement of the west wing of Moritzburg. In 1936, the National Socialists had it whitewashed. The hall has not been open to the public since water damage during the construction of the extension of the Kunstmuseum from 2005 to 2008 and is to be renovated in the foreseeable future. As part of a research project of the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt (German Federal Environmental Foundation), it was investigated how the building fabric infested with mold can be decontaminated.
In Nazi Germany With the seizure of control by the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and their defamation of modern art as "degenerate art", the Halle collection came into danger. Halle's long-time mayor, Richard Robert Rive, who was well-disposed towards the museum, was retired. His National Socialist successor, Johannes Weidemann, was a thorn in the side of the orientation of the municipal art museum. He pursued the segregation of modern art.
Museum director Alois Schardt had become a member of the NSDAP in May 1933 and headed the Halle local group of the Militant League for German Culture. In the summer of 1933, he was called to Berlin, where he was to rearrange the presentation of the Modern Department of the National Gallery in the Kronprinzenpalais at Unter den Linden. Since he did not do his job to the satisfaction of the National Socialist cultural functionaries, he was sent back to Halle (Saale) in November 1933. From then on, he tried to take early retirement, but he did not succeed until 1936. In Halle (Saale), Schardt fought from 1934 onwards against the orders of the mayor to remove modern art from the public museum tour, which Schardt refused to do with a variety of arguments. So in February 1935 he was given leave of absence and Hermann Schiebel, rector of the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design, was provisionally entrusted with the management of the museum. Schiebel cleared the exhibition space of the museum for a tribute to the city's most famous son, George Frideric Handel, on the occasion of his 250th birthday. From November 1935 onwards, he presented the museum's collection in a public tour up to art around 1900, and in the attic of the Thalamt, the so-called special presentation "Degenerate Art" could be seen for an additional fee and entry of name and address in a "guest book". The most famous visitor to this presentation was the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, who visited Halle on his trip to Germany at the turn of the year 1936/37.
Numerous paintings were on display from 19 July 1937 at the Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich and were later sold abroad for foreign currency. In August 1937, as part of the Germany-wide concerted action "Degenerate Art", the National Socialists confiscated works by Walther Bötticher, Otto Dix, Josef Eberz, Lyonel Feininger, Ludwig Gies, George Grosz, Erich Heckel, Karl Hofer, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka, Käthe Kollwitz, Max Liebermann, El Lissitzky, August Macke, Franz Marc, Gerhard Marcks, Ludwig Meidner, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Otto Mueller, Edvard Munch, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, Hans Reichel, Christian Rohlfs, Fritz Schaefler, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Julius Tinzmann and Kurt Otto von Tuch (1877–1963).According to the database "Entartete Kunst" of Freie Universität Berlin: As a result, the museum lost its outstanding works, what had been its identity until then.
To mark the establishment and loss of the first modern collection, the museum organized the large special exhibition Bauhaus Master Modernism. The comeback in 2019/20.
From the summer of 1939 to 1945, the art journalist and NSDAP functionary Robert Scholz was director of the museum. Under his leadership, other of the remaining works of modernism were sold and from then on exhibitions of National Socialist art as well as propaganda exhibitions took place. The museum was open until the end of the war, although the remaining collection holdings were either secured in the basement or for the most part stored in an adit near Bösenburg. Essentially, external special and propaganda exhibitions took place until the end of the war.
Soviet occupation zone and GDR As early as July 1945, the Halle magistrate decided to reacquire the holdings lost as "degenerate". In 1947/48, the museum's first post-war director, Gerhard Händler, succeeded in building up a new collection of modern art in the Soviet occupation zone with financial resources from the Ministry of Adult Education of the State of Saxony-Anhalt, which understood itself in the tradition of the lost collection and at the same time integrated modern art created between 1933 and 1945, including works by Alexej von Jawlensky, Ernst Wilhelm Nay or Carl Hofer. In this way, he founded a new collection with important acquisitions, which today contains essential elements of the museum's current collection presentation Paths of Modernism. Art in Germany in the 20th century.
On 7 October 1948, the museum was reopened and the newly acquired works were shown to the public in the first post-war presentation of the collection. In the autumn of the same year, the so-called debate on formalism began with articles of Aleksandr Dymshits in the Tägliche Rundschau. For example, Händler was exposed to massive criticism of his museum concept, which he evaded by fleeing via West Berlin to the Western occupation zones. His successor was Dorothea Haupt, who had been an employee of the museum since 1946 and herself migrated to West Germany some time later.
From 1950 to 1952, the museum administration in Saxony-Anhalt was centralised under Heinz Arno Knorr. Museums and collections in Halle (Saale), Dessau, Freyburg and other places were united to form the Landesgalerie Sachsen-Anhalt (lit.: Saxony-Anhalt State Gallery).