Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum

Description

In Braunschweig the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum (HAUM) preserves an extensive art collection of about 4,000 works spanning roughly 3,000 years of art history; the institution has borne this name since 1927, and its origins go back to its opening in 1754.

The collection originated in the ducal cabinet of art and naturalia assembled by Duke Karl I and was initially housed in the city’s courts. Early on the cabinet was open to the public and thus belonged to the first museums in Germany. Parts of the natural history holdings later formed the basis of a natural history museum.

In the 19th century structural problems in the ducal palace and the Napoleonic occupation of 1806 brought severe losses; many objects were taken to Paris but returned after the Wars of Liberation. The loss of resources made a representative new building necessary; at the end of the 19th century the museum received a new building in the style of the Italian Renaissance, which still shapes its external appearance and adjoins a museum park. In the following decades the holdings grew only slowly.

After the end of the duchy the museum’s sponsorship changed, and after the Second World War the state of Lower Saxony assumed responsibility. In 1937, in the course of the National Socialist campaign “Degenerate Art,” fifteen works from the collection were confiscated. During the war the building remained largely unscathed; after 1945 uses by the military administration and as an office building led to substantial interventions.

At the beginning of the 21st century the complex was comprehensively renewed: behind the historic main building an extension was built from 2008 to 2010 with three storeys and about 4,000 m² for the library, archive, Prints and Drawings Cabinet, workshops, café and administration. The historicist main building was extensively renovated from 2013 and equipped with modern exhibition technology; since the reopening on 23 October 2016 the rooms have been used exclusively for the collections and exhibitions. The medieval collection is presented in Burg Dankwarderode; during the construction phase outstanding works were shown in the special exhibition “Epochal – Masterpieces of the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum from Antiquity to the Present.” In 2024 a historical coin collection was transferred as a long-term loan; it is to be exhibited and made accessible for research in the future. The ground floor provides a newly secured area for changing thematic presentations.

The holdings derive from ducal collections and grew through additions from various residences. They include bronze statues, Kunstkammer objects, furniture, ivory carvings, a significant majolica collection north of the Alps, more than 200 enamel works, and East Asian objects. The painting collection was notably expanded through acquisitions of Dutch landscapes and still lifes.

The sculpture and applied arts store is largely based on ducal holdings and displays, among other objects, the Herzog-Julius-Büchse (1580–1585), a desk from Antwerp around 1700, a mirror clock (Augsburg 1649), a rolling-ball clock (around 1600), and a court rapier from the 18th century.

The Prints and Drawings Cabinet also goes back to the founding collections of 1754 and today preserves a focus on European graphic art from the late Middle Ages to the present, with particularly strong holdings of the Dutch and German schools as well as important Italian sheets. The total holdings comprise about 145,000 prints, just under 10,000 drawings and more than 1,000 illustrated books. A virtual Prints and Drawings Cabinet in cooperation with the Herzog August Bibliothek makes numerous sheets accessible online; the digital holdings include over 46,000 descriptions and images. Due to the sensitivity of works on paper selected sheets are rotated regularly; a study room has enabled scholarly insight and practical engagement with printmaking techniques since 2010.