Museum Georg Schäfer
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The Museum Georg Schäfer is a German art museum in Schweinfurt, Bavaria, Germany. Based on the private art collection of German industrialist Georg Schäfer, the museum primarily collects 19th-century paintings by artists from German-speaking countries.
History
Georg Schäfer (1896–1975) began actively collecting paintings in the 1950s, and architect Erich Schelling drew up plans for a museum to house the collection. A later design by Mies van der Rohe was rejected when the Schweinfurt city council declined to assume the cost of maintaining the museum. The plans were later adapted for the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.
The city of Schweinfurt and the Schäfer family first came to terms on housing the collection in a museum in 1988, but those plans were delayed by a financial crisis in the FAG Kugelfischer company, which led Schäfer's heirs to mortgage the art collection. By the end of 1997 the family had regained control of much of the collection and established a foundation to protect it. City officials meanwhile secured resources for the museum, and in February 1997 Volker Staab won the commission to design the museum.
The museum is sited next to the city hall (Rathaus) at the southern entry to downtown Schweinfurt. The museum opened to the public on 23 September 2000.
Collection
- The museum has a comprehensive collection of 160 paintings and 110 drawings by Carl Spitzweg, including The Bookworm.
- Other artists represented in the collection are Caspar David Friedrich, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Carl Rottmann, Domenico Quaglio, Albrecht Adam, Wilhelm von Kobell, Fritz von Uhde, Wilhelm Leibl, Adolph Menzel, Franz Lenbach, Hans Thoma, Lovis Corinth, Max Liebermann, Max Slevogt, and Max Beckmann.
