The Bavarian Museum Landscape

Bavaria is the largest federal state in Germany in terms of area. Due to this size alone, but not least thanks to its history, the Free State of Bavaria stands for cultural diversity like no other federal state. Its landscape includes fertile plains, rolling hills and low mountain ranges as well as parts of the high Alps. Old Bavaria (which roughly included today's districts of Upper Bavaria, Lower Bavaria and Upper Palatinate) are the parts of the state where the dialect and culture best fulfil the usual clichés of the Bavarian way of life. It comprises the ancestral lands of the Wittelsbach dynasty, which ruled from the Middle Ages until the end of the First World War, and was joined by the Franconian districts and Swabia in the early 19th century when the kingdom was formed. Until then, they had been characterised by political fragmentation. Imperial cities, ecclesiastical and secular territories existed confidently side by side, which led to different developments in a small area and distinctive characteristics.

The denomination - which was almost entirely Catholic in Old Bavaria, Catholic with Protestant communities in Swabia, especially in the imperial cities, and often Protestant in Franconia with significant Jewish communities - was a key factor in this. The traditional forms of agriculture also differed greatly due to the divergent climatic and landscape conditions in the individual parts of the country: Agriculture, which dominated the economy until after the Second World War, ranged from pasture farming in the Alps to viticulture in Mainfranken, from the meagre farming opportunities in the Rhön or the Upper Palatinate Forest to the prosperous farmers in the Lower Bavarian Gäuboden. Trade and industry flourished early on in the urban centres of Augsburg and Nuremberg, while the electoral and later royal residence city of Munich became important primarily as an administrative centre and - after replacing Ingolstadt in this role - as a university city and eventually as a city of art. Beer in the south, in the centre and in the east, wine in the north-west, bread dumplings or potato dumplings, Upper Bavarian lederhosen stylised into a cliché or denominational costume in Franconia - in traditional daily life it was easy to distinguish between origin and regional custom.

This diversity, which has grown over the centuries, has found expression in Bavaria's museums. At a time when regional cultural differences are increasingly receding from the social mainstream, this is of growing importance for the formation of regional or local identity. The museums do not preserve the knowledge and cultural assets of earlier generations in order to revive the supposedly good old days in nostalgic glorification, but to pass on both and to preserve the joy of the special and unique. Today, they have an important function: as a cultural anchor and public repository of knowledge, not least as a meeting place for all groups in society, as a platform for discussion, but also as institutions that contribute to social discourse and take a stand on social and political developments.
This was not always the case.

The beginnings of Bavarian museums can be traced back to manorial treasuries and cabinets of curiosities. They served the purpose of representation, were intended to amaze visitors and at the same time emphasise the importance of the princely collector. The art possessions of the House of Wittelsbach thus formed the first and essential foundation of later state museums. Duke Albrecht V (reigned 1550-1579) had already collected paintings from the middle of the 16th century. The Antiquarium in the Munich Residence was built from 1570 on to house the Elector's collection of Greek and Roman sculptures (or copies of them). At the time, it was the most important collection of its kind north of the Alps.

The Electors Maximilian I (reigned 1594-1651) and Max II. Emanuel (reigned 1679-1726) significantly expanded the art collections. However, the holdings were significantly augmented by the possessions of the other Wittelsbach lines that were brought to Munich, especially by Elector Carl Theodor (r. 1777-1799), who came from the Palatinate, and his successor Max IV Joseph (r. 1799-1825), who was crowned the first Bavarian king in 1806. At the same time, the joy of acquiring and owning beautiful and prestigious things could also be found in the territories that were to complement Old Bavaria at the beginning of the 19th century, for example in various Franconian and Swabian secular and ecclesiastical residences or in the imperial cities with their patricians and wealthy bourgeoisie. Their incorporation into the emerging kingdom led to the centralisation of further large collections of art treasures.

In the Age of Enlightenment at the end of the 18th century, there were calls to open up art collections in the interests of "popular education". State museums in the narrower sense, i.e. public institutions that were also intended to research their collections and communicate them to visitors, were not founded until the time of the art-loving King Ludwig I (reigned 1825-1848). He had the Glyptothek (Glyptothek) (opened in 1830) and the Alte Pinakothek (Old Pinacoteca) (1836) built in Munich.

Around the same time, committed citizens in the state, often organised in historical societies, brought together "antiquities" and natural history collections. The oldest "non-state" museum in Bavaria is the town museum in the Swabian town of Lauingen, which was already open to the public around 1810, having started collecting in the 18th century. From 1822, a collection of Roman artefacts in Augsburg was intended not least to contribute to the education of the "studying youth". Such initiatives were supported by the royal family, who wanted to promote a federal national consciousness and regional patriotism at the same time. For example, during a visit to Bayreuth in 1830, Ludwig I advised the local mayor to establish an "Antiquarium".

The founding of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (1852) and the establishment of the Neue Pinakothek (New Pinakothek), which opened in 1853, and the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum (Bavarian National Museum) (1867) in Munich were of central importance for the development of museums in Bavaria in the 19th century. In the late 19th century, the study of folklore gained in interest. In addition to historical relics and art collections, many of the museums that were now increasingly established in Bavaria also focussed on "folk art". In 1906, the Deutsches Museum (German Museum) in Munich focussed on the natural sciences and technology with what was initially a provisional exhibition.

By 1907, there were already 125 museums in what is now know as Germany, plus eight in the Palatinate, which still belonged to Bavaria at the time. With the end of the monarchy in 1918, many palaces and former Wittelsbach properties were transferred to the young Free State and offered new opportunities for museum use. In particular, the castles of the "fairytale king" Ludwig II (reigned 1864-1886) in Neuschwanstein, Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee quickly became crowd-pullers.

During the Nazi era, Munich, as the "Capital of German Art" and later the "Capital of the Movement", was one of the most important centres for the National Socialist regime alongside Nuremberg and Berlin. Renowned new foundations such as the Haus der Kunst (House of German Art) (external link, opens in a new window), which opened in 1937, and the Deutsches Jagd- und Fischereimuseum (German Hunting and Fishing Museum), which opened in Munich in 1938, were part of the regime's self-promotion. In 1939, a museum directory lists 331 Bavarian museums that were now subject to the influences of Nazi ideology. Many Bavarian museums profited from the National Socialist theft of art and culture by acquiring expropriated works of art and other valuables from Jewish property or from occupied territories at low cost. The process of coming to terms with this continues to this day.

The Second World War and its consequences initially hampered the further development of Bavarian museums, but also led to new developments. At the suggestion of the American military authorities, one of the first post-war exhibitions of modern art formerly ostracised as "degenerate" was organised in Augsburg's Schaezlerpalais (Schaezlerpalais) as early as December 1945. Sites of Nazi terror, such as the concentration camps in Dachau and Flossenbürg, Obersalzberg and the former Nazi party rally grounds were museumised.

In 1968, a handbook of Bavarian museums and collections listed 303 institutions, without the museums of the Palatinate. However, the "wave of nostalgia" that soon followed gave a huge boost to the founding of new museums. Against the backdrop of rapidly changing economic and living patterns, open-air museums were also set up in the 1970s with holistic exhibitions of the living environments that were now coming to an end, supplemented by specialised museums on dying economic sectors and production methods. In 1976, the first major Bavarian state exhibition (external link, opens in a new window) of today's Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte (House of Bavarian History) took place.

Since then, the number of Bavarian museums has continued to grow, from 552 in 1981 and around 900 in 1991 to over 1,300 today. 1,200 of these are non-governmental organisations, i.e. municipal institutions or run by associations, foundations, religious communities, companies or private individuals.