Galerie im Hörsaalbau der Universität Leipzig

Description

At the University of Leipzig the Sammlung Ur- und Frühgeschichte documents material culture from the Paleolithic to the modern period and today comprises about 6,500 objects with a geographic range from Germany to South America. The collection focuses on finds related to regional prehistory; dominant are flaked and polished stone tools from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic, as well as urns and grave goods from the Bronze and Iron Ages from Central Germany, including examples of the Lusatian and Billendorf cultures.

Originating in the context of the Seminar für Vorgeschichte in the 1930s, the collection initially drew on holdings from former Leipzig private collections, municipal donations and targeted acquisitions. It was supplemented by holdings from the Geologisch-Paläontologischen Sammlung der Universität. In its early years the collection was housed in only a few rooms and also served teaching; by 1943 an inventory had been compiled and the holdings had grown to over a thousand items.

The collection suffered severe war damage in December 1943; although many objects had been evacuated and some later recovered, the inventory lists were lost, which significantly complicates present-day provenance research. In the following decades a reconstruction took place: recovered remnants of the holdings were consolidated, private donations expanded the collection, and from the 1970s onward new cataloguing and revisions were undertaken. Until 1990 the collection remained packed in storage rooms. With the reopening of the Lehrstuhl für Ur- und Frühgeschichte in the early 1990s a comprehensive restoration and documentation phase began; parts of the collection have been on display again since the late 1990s in rooms on the Ritterstraße, and further holdings from the Geologisch-Paläontologischen Sammlung were incorporated from 2002.

The exhibition presents Paleolithic material chiefly in the form of flint finds such as hand axes, blades and scrapers, some relating to major sites like St. Acheul, La Micoque and Le Moustier. The Neolithic holdings are mainly represented by regional ceramics and stone tools; outstanding pieces include fully preserved graves of the Corded Ware culture. Numerous burial vessels from the Bronze and early Iron Ages — Buckelurnen, double-conical and multi-chamber vessels — come predominantly from Central Germany and the western Polish area; the house urn from Burgkemnitz is among the earliest finds of its kind in the region (year of discovery 1826). The collection is complemented by a few widely traveled objects, such as a marble idol from Anatolia, a Mediterranean bronze bowl and Native American arrowheads from North America.

The collection holdings are regularly shown in changing exhibitions and presented to the public through collaborations with the Antikenmuseum der Universität Leipzig as well as during the Leipziger Museumsnacht.