The Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

The Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg (Art Collections of the Fortress of Coburg) are an institute belonging to the Landesstiftung Coburg (State Foundation Coburg). Founded in 1919, it received the personal property of the dukes of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, which also included their historical collections. Its history as a museum started with the fortress’s renovation in the neo-gothic style commissioned by Duke Ernst I (r. 1826–1846), including the set-up of historicising memorial displays. Their delivery to the duke in 1839 may considered as the birthday of the art collections as a public museum. A first detailed description of the collections in the form of a tour of the exhibition was published in print in 1843.

In 1853, Duke Ernst II (r. 1844–1893) offered the Veste Coburg as headquarters to the Germanisches Nationalmuseum founded a year previously. After his wish had not come to fruition, he intensified the further development of the museum on the Veste. The expansion of the collections was sponsored not least by his brother Prince Albert (1819–1861), the husband of Queen Victoria (r. 1837–1901). In 1854, for the first time a part-time director was appointed for the Kunstsammlungen auf der Veste Coburg, since 1897 the position of the director of collections has been filled full time.

In 1920, the ownership of the real estate of the Veste Coburg passed to the free state of Bavaria, which bears the cost of all renovation and construction work but grants the Coburger Landesstiftung the free use of the premises. The Landesstiftung is responsible for running the museum. It has the statutory task to preserve and increase the collections, to analyse them scientifically and to make them publicly available to the population. Therefore, ever since the museological and scholarly capacities of the Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg have been expanded. Part of this expansion are the extensions of the exhibition and deposit space as far as circumstances allow, the conservational maintenance of the collections, editing of publications, the installation of special exhibitions and a wide range of dissemination programmes.

The new construction of the Europäisches Museum für modernes Glas (European Museum for Modern Glass) was completed in 2008 as a branch of Veste Coburg situated at Park Rosenau in Rödental near Coburg. It was financed by a foundation initiated by the Coburg entrepreneur Otto Waldrich. In conjunction with the contemporaneous take-over of the princely mansion, which thus far had been granted to the ducal family for their personal use, and with the new installation of an exhibition on artillery on the Veste’s Gedeckte Batterie (covered battery), planned for 2017, these steps document the most recent development.

Collections and Historical Premises

The Coburg collections have four main areas. The Kupferstichkabinett (print room) was assembled during the second half of the eighteenth century by Duke Franz Friedrich Anton von Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (r. 1800–1806) and is one of the largest collections of prints in Germany. It contains 220,000 sheets and its holdings of prints from all European schools active from the late fifteenth to the twentieth centuries are of international importance. A group of drawings by the "Meister der Coburger Rundblätter" (Master of the Coburg tondi drawings, late fifteenth century), the "Codex Coburgensis" (sixteenth century), eight drawings by Dürer as well as the almost completely preserved printed oeuvre by Dürer, Cranach or Rembrandt attest to the quality of the collection.

The collection of glassware (c.5,000 objects) with excellent examples of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Venetian glass, glassware "à la façon de Venise", baroque glass from Bohemia, ruby glass as well as glass of the nineteenth century up to art nouveau is one of the most important in Germany. By way of the regularly held "Coburger Glaspreis" (Coburg glass prize), since 1977 an internationally oriented collection of contemporary glassware has been assembled, which is leading in Europe (held at the branch museum in Rödental).

Also of international rank is the collection comprising c.10,000 objects of historical arms and armour from the armouries of the Veste and of the city of Coburg. Such rarities as the harness of the court dwarf of Duke Johann Casimir (r. 1572–1633) of c.1630, artistically decorated cutting and stabbing weapons as well as uncommon siege and defence weapons are worth mentioning. The collection of weapons for the hunt contains among other things very rare linen dog armour and mobile hunting scales. Among the vehicles excel the two oldest completely preserved carriages worldwide from the middle of the sixteenth century and a series of baroque carousel sledges for the courtly entertainment of the ladies at tournaments.

In the collection of old German art, which includes the historical holdings of the Veste as well as the collections of the Schweinfurt industrialist Georg Schäfer (1896–1975), acquired in 2003, are paintings by Lucas Cranach (1472–1553) (30 works) and a panel by Matthias Grünewald (around 1480/83–1528). A large fourteenth-century Pietà constitutes the oldest exemplar of this collection.

The collection of autographs (7,000 objects) and the coin collection (c.20,000 objects) as well as a smaller group of artisanal objects complement the already mentioned thematic areas.

The exhibition of the collections at the museum is particularly enriched by the historical interiors of the Veste. The princely mansion with its historicising decoration of the twentieth century, the Große Hofstube (large court parlour) dating to the early sixteenth century and the hunting chamber of 1632 with its late-renaissance intarsiaed wood panelling which was brought from castle Ehrenburg to the Veste are of particular importance.

Luther's stay during the Augsburg Diet of 1530 turned the Veste into an outstanding memorial to Luther. The Luther chamber as well as Luther memorabilia, for example a Hedwigsglas (reliquary cup in which water had turned into wine) of the twelfth century once among the reformer’s possessions, set particular accents.

Collections owned by the Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg available on bavarikon

Exhibitions of the Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg available on bavarikon

Contact

Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg
Veste Coburg
96450 Coburg

Telephone: +49 (0)9561/879-0,
Phone Enquiry Service: +49 (0)9561/879-79
Fax: +49 (0)9561/879-66
E-mail: sekretariat@kunstsammlungen-coburg.de