Research

Current projects

The Silver Restitution Project

The Bayerisches Nationalmuseum is working on the restitution of 111 objects from the silver confiscation imposed on German Jews in 1939 to descendants of the last legitimate owners. The current project "Search for Heirs to Silver Objects Confiscated in 1939 and now in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum", which runs to 2023, is funded by the German Lost Art Foundation and the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and Art.

"White gold"

The Meissen Porcelain Collection Catalogue

The scholarly research encompasses the collections of Böttger stoneware and Böttger porcelain (72 objects) and Meissen porcelain with house painter decorations – in particular by the Aufenwerth and Seuter families of Augsburg (63 objects) – belonging to the Meissen Porcelain Collection Ernst Schneider Foundation located at Lustheim Palace. In addition to recording this part of the collection, the planned inventory catalogue will also include the life and achievements of the collector Dr Ernst Schneider.
The project is supported by the Edith Haberland Wagner Foundation, Munich.

Excellent Ivories

Scientific Catalogue on Ivories

The project of a scientific catalogue of the ivory collection of the 16th to 18th centuries comprises the research on about 280 objects by some 70 artists from the ivory collection of the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum. These include figurative ivories (statuettes, groups of figures, reliefs, and tankard vessels) as well as turned ivories, which are on display in the museum's permanent exhibition and at the Kunstkammer of Burg Trausnitz, the branch museum in Landshut. The planned catalogue will be supplemented by an scientific essay on the history of the Munich ivory collection.
The project is funded by the Eleonore Schamberger Foundation and the Reiner Winkler Foundation.

Painting in wood

The graphic collection of the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum contains prints and hand drawings from the end of the 14th century to the early 20th century and numbers around 12,000 sheets. The project of conservation and cataloguing of the graphic collection includes the processing of the historical core of the collection with more than 2200 sheets from the estate of the architect Adalbert Sickinger. A unique collection from the early 16th century consists of 30 gouaches on parchment by Hans Mielich. The aim of the project is to catalogue, conserve, digitise and thus popularise the collection.
The project is supported by the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation, the Eleonora Schamberger Foundation and the Bauer Baroque Foundation.

The History of Jewish Schooling

A New Concept at the Bavarian School Museum

The section on the history of Jewish schooling in the Bavarian School Museum in Ichenhausen, a branch museum of the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, is being renewed. Following an introduction to teacher training, an excursion on school history of Ichenhausen and a presentation of the different types of school systems, the previous exhibition culminated, seemingly quite inevitably, in the years following 1933 leading up to the Holocaust. But the history of Jewish schooling is more than that.
The question is: What should be presented in the new permanent exhibition and, above all, how should it be presented? After all, in many cases the material culture of Jewish education is no different from that of other denominations. With the support of and in discourse with scholars from Jewish museums and the academic field, the project is developing a new, innovative concept for the presentation of Jewish educational history in Bavaria in museums up to the present.