Museum’s History

The idea of establishing a museum in Gdańsk was already present in the city’s cultural life in the first half of the 19th century. The activities of the Fine Arts Society (Kunstverein), founded in 1835, played an important role in this process. From the very beginning, the Society acquired paintings with a view to establishing a future museum gallery.

BEGINNINGS

One of the Society’s founding members, the painter Johann Carl Schultz, who later initiated the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings and Art Monuments of Gdańsk (1856), met the sculptor Rudolf Freitag during a trip to Italy in 1844 and persuaded him to come to Gdańsk. Freitag took up a professorship at the Gdańsk School of Fine Arts and became involved in bringing the idea of establishing a museum to fruition.

In 1848, he obtained permission to live in the ruined building of the former Franciscan monastery, which was owned by the Ministry of War. He moved his own collection of sculptures, plaster casts, works of decorative arts and a collection of various “antiquities” there. Thanks to Freitag’s persistence, the historic building was spared demolition and was eventually transferred to the city by the royal government in Berlin in 1864.

For many years, the sculptor worked to establish a museum, collecting historical objects from Gdańsk and the surrounding area and unsuccessfully seeking funds to restore the building. He sent petitions to the Prussian king and the city authorities.

Establishment of the institution in the former franciscan monastery

The formal establishment of the museum was made possible by a foundation established by the Gdańsk merchant Carl Gottfried Klose (1794–1868) and his heirs, Friedrich and Johanna Carolina Hennings, who donated 60,000 thalers and paintings valued at 4,000 thalers for this purpose. On 30 March 1870, the “Gdańsk Municipal Museum, founded by Carl Gottfried Klose and his heirs” was formally established and became the property of the city.

The Museum was governed by a twelve-member board of curators, with Rudolf Freitag appointed as its first curator. The renovation and reconstruction of the building, based on a design by city architect Julius Albert Licht, was completed at the beginning of 1872. In December of that year, the first art exhibition in the Picture Gallery opened to the public. It was organised by the Society of Friends of Fine Arts. The first exhibition organised by the Municipal Museum opened on 1 March 1873.

Building the municipal museum collection

In 1872, the valuable collection assembled by the Gdańsk merchant Jacob Kabrun (1759–1814) was transferred to the Museum and formally incorporated into its holdings in 1875. The collection had been bequeathed to the Gdańsk Academy of Commerce in 1814. It comprised more than 300 paintings, predominantly Flemish and Dutch, as well as almost 2,000 drawings and watercolours and around 11,000 prints. Within the Museum, it functioned as a separate collection with its own legal personality.

In 1884, the holdings of the Museum of Decorative Arts (Westpreussisches Provinzial Gewerbe-Museum) were transferred to the Municipal Museum building. The institution had been established in Gdańsk on 28 December 1881 as a branch of the West Prussian Provincial Museum (Westpreußisches Provinzialmuseum), founded more than a year earlier and housed in the Green Gate. The founding collection of the Museum of Decorative Arts consisted of a collection of more than 400 objects assembled by Eduard Ludwig Garbe, a Gdańsk merchant and collector, and purchased by the Association of the West Prussian Province for 9,000 marks. It included ceramics, predominantly faience, copper and brass objects, and furniture.

Initially, the collection was kept in the home of Oskar Bischoff, one of the members of the founding committee, at 3 Kowalska Street in Gdańsk. Following the transfer of the collection to the Municipal Museum in April 1884, the two institutions operated as the Stadt- und Kunstgewerbemuseum. The first decorative arts exhibition opened to the public in the cloisters of the former Franciscan monastery on 5 August 1885.

Museum management

Johannes Heise, the conservator of monuments for the province of West Prussia, served as director of the Museum of Decorative Arts. Following his death in 1899, he was succeeded by Oskar E. S. Bischoff, curator of the Municipal Museum on behalf of the City Administration. In 1912, Hans F. Secker became head of both institutions, and in 1916 he was appointed director.

He held this position until 1922, overseeing the final merger of the two museums, as well as their modernisation and reconstruction and the opening of new galleries. In 1921, the Museum of Decorative Arts officially ceased to exist as a separate institution, and its holdings became one of the departments of the Municipal Museum. In this form, the institution continued to operate until the outbreak of the Second World War.

SECOND WORLD WAR

Measures to safeguard the museum collections in Gdańsk began before the outbreak of the Second World War. In August 1939, the most valuable works were moved from the attic to the cloisters in case of possible air raids. In 1941, the fire protection system began to be modernised, and an armoured door was installed in the basement. The most delicate objects made of silver, amber, porcelain and faience were to be stored there. The defeat of the German forces at Stalingrad and the approaching Eastern Front accelerated efforts to protect Gdańsk’s cultural heritage.

Evacuation of the collections

Between 1943 and 1945, the most valuable furnishings and works of art from Gdańsk’s historic buildings, as well as the collections of the Municipal Museum in Gdańsk, were evacuated. A number of locations in the surrounding area were selected as places to which works of art from Gdańsk were to be transported: Orlinki; Giemlice; Sobowidz (43 paintings and furniture); Żelisławki (59 paintings, books, photographic documentation and drawings); Rusocin (40 paintings and furniture); Pręgowo (paintings and 27 small objects, including fans, antique book bindings and snuffboxes); Tujec (39 paintings); Stegna (258 paintings); Grabiny Zameczek (2 chests of silver objects and chests containing brass, tin and copper objects, as well as porcelain and faience); Przywidz (18 chests of faience, 7 chests of porcelain, 2 chests of textiles and furniture); Pawłowo (3 chests of amber objects); Mierzeszyn (sculptures and decorative arts objects); Rzucewo (numismatic objects, ivory objects and furniture); and Sobowidz (part of the graphic arts collection, mainly reproductive prints, as well as drawings).

On the orders of Gauleiter Albert Forster, the most valuable works of art were evacuated in the autumn of 1944 to Halle, Reinhardsbrunn Castle near Gotha, and small towns at the foot of the Rhön Mountains in Thuringia. The museum’s most valuable work, Portrait of Johann Schwarzwaldt by Hans Holbein the Younger, was deposited in the vault of the Bank of Gdańsk. Towards the end of the war, in February and March 1945, it was moved, together with some of the works hidden in locations south of Gdańsk, including Żelisławki, to the cellars of the Great Armoury.

Some objects were secured in the cloisters of the Municipal Museum, including metalwork, furniture and more than 400 paintings, among them works from the collection of Lesser Giełdziński. Unfortunately, most of these works were destroyed in the fire.

The museum during the war

Throughout the war, alongside efforts to safeguard its collections, the Municipal Museum continued to expand its holdings and organise exhibitions. The Nazi aggression against European countries was accompanied by large-scale looting of works of art. Looted cultural property was inventoried and brought to the Municipal Museum, including works from the Sierakowski family collection in Waplewo and valuables belonging to the Blackheads’ guild in Riga.

Works confiscated from private individuals were sent to auction houses and antique shops run by Nazi art dealers, who facilitated purchases by German collectors and institutions. The director of the Municipal Museum, Willi Drost, also took advantage of these new opportunities to acquire objects for the Museum’s collection, with financial support from the Nazi authorities in Gdańsk.

During the 1941–1942 reporting period, the Museum acquired 72 paintings, 30 prints and drawings, and four sculptures. In the following period, 1942–1943, it purchased 14 oil paintings, six drawings and portfolios of prints. In 1943–1944, the director made two trips to the Netherlands, from which he brought back paintings by Dutch masters.

Drost also expanded the collection with works by artists from Gdańsk, including Fritz Pfuhle, Stanisław Chlebowski, Bruno Paetsch, Johann Carl Schultz and Daniel Chodowiecki.

During the war, the Municipal Museum acquired, among others, the following paintings: Portrait of a Man by Aelbert Jacobszoon Cuyp (1620–1691), Horsemen before a Tent by Philips Wouwerman (1619–1668), Cottages by a Canal by Jan Josephszoon van Goyen (1596–1656), The Flight into Egypt by David Teniers the Younger (1610–1690), The Lute Player by Adriaen van Ostade (1610–1685), Angel and Hagar in the Desert by Ferdinand Bol (1616–1680), Portrait of a Young Woman as Minerva by Paulus Janszoon Moreelse (1571–1638), Landscape with Ruins by Jacob van Ruisdael (1628–1682), Portrait of Children by Jacob Jordaens (1593–1678), and Portrait of the Artist by Alexis Grimou (1678–1733).

AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR

In 1945, on the ruins of the pre-war institution, the Municipal Museum resumed its activities under the Polish authorities. It took over a building that had been more than 60 per cent destroyed during the aerial bombardment and artillery shelling of the city in March 1945. A fire that lasted for nine days (20–29 March) gutted the building: the walls were left charred, the roof burned down, and the entire first floor was destroyed. The vaults on the ground floor were also damaged, windows were shattered, and the basements were flooded. Some of the historic objects that remained in the building were destroyed, including several Gdańsk pieces of furniture, artistic metalwork and part of the Lesser Giełdziński collection from the Gdańsk Hall. A total of 301 paintings were destroyed, while a further 11 were seriously damaged [1].

Post-war efforts to return the collections to the museum

Work on organising the Museum, which had been taken over by the Culture and Arts Department of the Municipal Administration, began as early as April 1945. On 5 April, Professor Jan Kilarski arrived in Gdańsk with a group of colleagues from the Ministry of Education to locate and secure hidden works of art. At the time, the last director of the Stadt- und Kunstgewerbemuseum, Professor Willi Drost, was still in Gdańsk and began cooperating with the Polish authorities.

Thanks to his information, some of the surviving collections that had been evacuated to locations around Gdańsk or hidden in the city towards the end of the war could be located and transported back to the Museum. Objects from Pawłowo, Rzucewo, Sobowidz, Pręgowo, Przywidz and Grabiny Zameczek gradually returned to the Museum. Unfortunately, in many cases the sites where museum property had been hidden were found looted; crates containing broken porcelain and glass, as well as fragments of damaged historic objects, were found scattered across the surrounding area [2].

At the same time, Soviet forces were searching for valuable works of art. The group of the Committee for Arts Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, which had arrived as early as March 1945, was headed by Lieutenant Colonel Leonty Denisov [3]. Supported by the Army Reserve Headquarters, Denisov’s brigade searched dozens of locations across Pomerania from early April to August 1945, as well as sites in Gdańsk where works of art had been hidden, including the Great Armoury, the cellars of the Old Town Hall and the cellars of the former Sparkasse, where a collection of 14,000 numismatic objects was discovered. The Soviet operation resulted in 98 crates containing a selection of the most valuable historic objects being transported to Moscow in two shipments, in September 1945 and March 1946, and deposited at the Pushkin Museum.

Historic objects brought to the Museum from across Pomerania were stored on the ground floor in the part of the building that had survived the fire. They were secured and treated by conservators, while inventory work was carried out simultaneously. The first inventory was compiled in June and July 1945 by Professor Willi Drost [4]. At the same time, work continued to secure and renovate the ruined building. Before reconstruction began, the rubble of the burned section of the Museum was thoroughly searched for buried exhibits; those who took part were entitled to bonuses [5].

During the first months of the Museum’s post-war operation, it was headed by Dr Edward Łepkowski. From 15 December 1945, the institution was directed by Dr Jerzy Güttler, followed by Dr Jan Chranicki from June 1946.

Reconstruction and reopening

Reconstruction began towards the end of 1946 and continued for the next ten years. The first exhibitions, presenting the art and culture of Gdańsk and Pomerania in earlier periods, were organised in the cloisters and on the ground floor. On 1 May 1948, the Museum reopened under the name State Museum in Gdańsk. The ceremony was attended by Deputy Minister of Culture and Art Włodzimierz Sokorski and Professor Stanisław Lorentz, Director of the National Museum in Warsaw.

On 1 July 1948, the institution was renamed the Pomeranian Museum. Its rapidly rebuilt collection consisted of works of art brought back from wartime evacuation sites, restituted objects, items transferred from the Presidium of the Municipal National Council and conservation repositories, numerous donations, and new acquisitions. The holdings were also supplemented by deposits from the National Museum in Warsaw, mainly 19th- and 20th-century Polish painting.

The broad range of objects collected made it possible to establish separate archaeological, historical and ethnographic collections. The archaeological, maritime and historical departments established within the Museum later became the foundations for other Gdańsk museums when they were transformed into independent institutions. These were the Maritime Museum (1960, now the National Maritime Museum); the Archaeological Museum (1962); and the Historical Museum of the City of Gdańsk (1971, now the Museum of Gdańsk).

On 7 October 1972, the Pomeranian Museum was granted the status of a National Museum.

Today, the National Museum in Gdańsk is a state cultural institution operated and funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

[1] Helena Kowalska, Straty wojenne Muzeum Miejskiego (Stadtmuseum) w Gdańsku, Seria Nowa, vol. 1, Malarstwo, Gdańsk 2017, pp. 44–45.

[2] Marta Krajewska, Powojenne dzieje zbiorów ceramiki i szkła Muzeum Narodowego w Gdańsku – odbudowa kolekcji w latach 1945–1953. Ludzie i fakty, in Nowy początek. (Od)budowa kolekcji muzealnych po II wojnie światowej, eds. J. Trupinda and A. Siuciak, Malbork 2019, p. 404.

[3] On the activities of Denisov’s group in Gdańsk and Pomerania, see Maria Korzon, Przyczynek do historii gdańskich zbiorów artystycznych, Cenne, Bezcenne, Utracone, 2000, nos. 1 (19), 2 (20) and 3 (21).

[4] Museum Library Archive, National Museum in Gdańsk, Inventar der Kunstgegenstände des Danziger Stadtmuseums übergeben Ende Juli 1945 [W. Drost], ref. no. MNG/A/I/14.

[5] Krajewska 2019, pp. 406–407.