The catalogue is dedicated to an important part – both in quantity and in quality – of the museum library’s collection: the botanical-pharmaceutical books. A foray into the history of botanical literature and illustration portrays the exploration of the flora, from its beginnings in antiquity until the 19^th century and its reflections in often gloriously illustrated books. The catalogue of around 330 botanical books from five centuries offers information on distinctive technical details on each book, as well as short texts on content, authors and illustrations. Several cross-reverences between historical forays and individual descriptions illustrate the comprehensiveness of the collection. An author index and an index of persons as well as an extensive bibliography offer further guidance. The book provides an insight into current botanical views: the perspectives of science, especially pharmaceutics, agriculture – and garden lovers.

The Cadolzburg was an important administrative centre of the house of Hohenzollern in Franconia and ranked among the best-preserved castles in Germany until its devastating destruction during the Second World War. The Germanische Nationalmuseum (GNM) was involved in deciding how to make use of the Cadolzburg after the war, and assigned Daniel Burger to create a concept for a German Castle Museum on that location. This monograph is a result of this project. It contains the current state of research on the castle, a historical summary, an analytical building specification, followed by a description of the Cadolzburg in the context of other Hohenzollern castles in Franconia. Topics covered include stonemason’s marks, the fortifications of the market Cadolzburg, and torture in the castle; finally, a list of officials, inventories, and a register of persons and locations associated with the Cadolzburg.

Kulturgeschichtliche Spaziergänge im Germanischen Nationalmuseum, Band 16

500 years ago Peter Henlein, a locksmith from Nuremberg, was among the first to create small-scale portable clocks. His contemporaries already praised him for this masterly performance. But do original "Henlein pocket watches" still exist? If so, how can they be identified? Collectors and specialists in museums have been concerned with this issue for a long time now, up to the discussion which clock could and should receive the title of the "World's Oldest Pocket Watch".
The accompanying volume to the exhibition is part of the series "Kulturgeschichtliche Spaziergänge im GNM" ["Cultural Strolls in the GNM"] and presents the most recent scientific findings on the "Henlein pocket watch" in a larger historical context.

Accompanying the exhibition in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum from 3 December 2015 until 6 March 2016 the volume features 50 costumes from the museum's collection dated between 1560 and 1650 that - along with international loans - were shown in this special exhibition for the first time. They are presented in the context of contemporary paintings and graphic art works that depict the original effect of the clothes and the way they were worn, in this way indicating a person's social status. Illustrated leaflets included in the volume furthermore show critical views on fashion that were spread at the same time. The exhibition volume also features rare pieces of everyday clothing from the 16th and 17th centuries, including the finds from a tailor's workshop in Bremen, as well as of working equipment such as needles, scissors, thimbles or clothes brushes. The section "Focus on Restauration" concentrates on the elaborate forms of production and conservatory work using the example of chosen exhibits. The appendix lists materials of and techniques relevant to the garments. The catalogue, finally, features close ups of forms, materials and decor of early modern clothing, thus making the forgotten messages engrained in the garments visible to observers and readers today.

2nd Edition

How do we perceive the world and pictures? The book is based around the hypothesis that we initially perceive the world as well as  pictures by feelings and that there is a direct connection between the two. By debating fascination and horror, such as can be triggered by Anselm Kiefer´s Deutschlandbilder, the author discusses their consequences and conclusions for our cultural self-perception. The author develops a comprehensive theory on image and culture which is new in this field of research and also includes the special status of the art.

The phenomenon of 'cold paint', that is, unfired painting on medieval and early modern glass paintings, has only recently come into the focus of restoration and research. In March 2016, a workshop organized by the National Committee of the Corpus Vitrearum Germany together with the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg was dedicated to this topic. The presentations and lectures are now available in published form.

If works of art are looked at really intensively, then visual perception will become an incomparable adventure. Then one immerses in their phenomenal world and in the intrinsic reality of painting. Only then also the genuine potential of the pictures will be seen. In three detailed chapters, a receptive-aesthetic-phenomenological journey through magnificent picture landscapes is undertaken.

In Théodore Géricault's Raft of the Medusa, it is important to follow the dynamic visual experience and the complex formations that disclose the work‘s previously unseen dimensions of meaning.The hunt for Moby Dick is once again painted by Frank Stella. Everything revolves around the question: how can his non-representational works follow Melville's novel, if the story itself already deals with the impossibility of narration? The pictorial landscape unfolded by Anselm Kiefer in his history painting Varus requires an entrance into the founding myth of the Hermannsschlacht. Here, one encounters not only a detailed genealogy of patriotic thinking developed in a picture-logical manner – but also the fractures and instabilities and the apocalyptic consequences of this German narration.It is always about what is visible to the eye and about what remains invisible but yet is indispensable.

Mit den Namen Luther und Kolumbus verbinden sich heute meist Vorstellungen von Aufbruch, Expansion und Glaubensfreiheit. Ausstellung und Katalog fragen anlässlich des 500. Reformationsjubiläums nach den Folgen der Gleichzeitigkeit von Glaubens- und Weltbildwandel im 16. Jahrhundert. Wie konnte eine sich auf die Autorität des Alten berufende Gesellschaft mit dem Veränderungsdruck ihrer Zeit umgehen? Ein 185 Nummern umfassender, reich illustrierter Katalog und sieben wissenschaftliche Beiträge beleuchten eine faszinierende Welt im Wandel, in der Aufbruchs-und Endzeitstimmung gleichermaßen ihren Platz hatten und der Umgang mit Neuem und Fremdem erst erprobt werden musste.

Die Schausammlungen des Germanischen Nationalmuseums, Band 1

Die Neukonzeption der Schausammlung »Kleidung des 18. bis 20. Jahrhunderts« konnte 2002 mit einer feierlichen Eröffnung abgeschlossen werden. Die neue Dauerausstellung der Kostümsammlung führt durch 300 Jahre Kleidungskultur. Da sie nicht nur den Wandel der Kleider und Moden zeigt, sondern auch inhaltlich und ausstellungstechnisch auf neuen Grundlagen beruht, trägt sie den Titel »Kleiderwechsel«. Die Kostümsammlung des Germanischen Nationalmuseums gehört zu den ältesten textilen Fachsammlungen. Begleitet wird die Ausstellung vom ersten Band einer Publikationsreihe, mit der das Germanische Nationalmuseum seine neu eingerichteten Schausammlungen erschließt.

Accompanying the exhibition of the same title ("Aufbruch der Jugend - Deutsche Jugendbewegung zwischen Selbstbestimmung und Verführung") in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum from 26 September 2013 until 19 January 2014.
In the time around 1900, “youth” was synonymous with awakening and renewal, future and visions. Young middle-class people were challenging their elders. Many of the aims of these young people were met by the demands of the Lebensreform movement. Many young people joined organisations like “Wandervogel”, joint activities strengthening a sense of belonging.
In 35 critical essays and illustrated by 280 objects this volume depicts the youth movement from its beginnings, its political ideologisation, until the FRG’s first open-air festival in Schloss Waldeck in 1964.

Third, completely revised edition 2018.

Friedrich Albert Schmidt, 1846–1916, belonged to the Weimar school of painters during the end phase of Realism and the transition to Impressionism. After studying art in Munich with Anschütz and Diez, the most formative years for his painting career resulted from his apprenticeship with Eugène Lavieille and his artistic friends in Barbizon, which was followed by more than five years with Arnold Böcklin in Florence. The influence of both masters can be seen clearly in his Weimar paintings and this influence continued well beyond the turn of the century. Schmidt reveals an impressive diversity in his artistic work which can be attributed to his various life phases and their associated painting periods, and which is also reflected in his choice of his tools. These range from large format oil paintings of studio work, up to paintings of medium and small sized formats from outdoor work, as well as etchings, watercolors and drawings in ink.

This presentation on the life of the German landscape painter Friedrich Albert Schmidt came from the desire to present an updated biography of the artist, along with images of his artistic work. Although he was well known and highly esteemed during his lifetime, today only a small group of art lovers of 19th Century landscape painting are familiar with his work. It is therefore the author’s objective to revive his work and communicate it to the current generation. Bearing this in mind, the presentation will primarily concentrate on documenting the formative stages of the artist’s life and his artistic painting periods. This third, completely revised edition of "Biography and painting register" 2018 records the latest insights about the artist and his work.

Friedrich Albert Schmidt is the great great uncle of the author.

Since not many decades a new type of artist has evolved, whose sole existence can be understood as another symptom of a total economisation of all areas of life: the business artist. He is an entrepreneur and manager, art director and designer. He organizes his production highly economic and delegates all work to his numerous assistants. He has become a global brand and strategically controls all marketing efforts. As an Art Star he stages his image and merges with global luxury brands.

In the tradition of Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami are the three most successful business artists of our time are chosen, who represent this type of artist at best within the actual discourse.

The volume sheds new light on the Parisian art world after the Second World War, its protagonists, inter(national) dimensions and aesthetic challenges. It assembles a selection of contributions of the annual congress 2014/15 held at the German Center for Art History Paris as well as  further results of research undertaken during that same year. Besides questions of historiography the publication focuses on case studies in which renowned artists like Giacometti, Picasso and Brassaï are analized. Furthermore, new protagonists, institutions and media are introduced and innovative perspectives developed. The volume thus makes a valuable contribution to the reevaluation of art of the postwar period.

The exegetical Beuys-reception assumes that he is an ‘authentic’ artist and that a certain immediacy defines his performance. The study, on the other hand, shows by analysing the tatar-legend as a narrative story, some autobiographical documents, performances and medialisations as well as the Beuys-retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in 1979 as a platform for the artistic staging that Beuys is an auto-fictional figure, which exposes its artificiality, constructiveness and fictionality. Thus, the irony of Beuys’ performance becomes apparent as a comment on the role and significance of the artist, that he maintained so offensively at the same time.

The mistresses of the French kings are decisive elements in common notions of living at Early Modern courts – a magnificent life full of glamour, affairs and intrigues, animated by beautiful women, who had lots of power and influence. This art historical study seeks to critically review and specify such popular assumptions. By exploring artifacts in diverse media (visual arts, architecture, poetry), which in the time of the French Renaissance were made either for or on the occasion of the royal favorite, she becomes vivid as a particularly multifarious figure of Early Modern court life.

Two female figures in French history are particularly focused upon here: Anne de Pisseleu (1508-1580?) and Diane de Poitiers (1500-1566). The images, residences und texts devised for both of them evoke the complex roles they were assigned at the courts of the Valois-kings Francis I and Henri II respectively. Their persona – generated by diverse media and developed in competition with the ones of powerful male favorites – cannot be considered role models for those royal mistresses that later, during the reign of Louis XIV and in the age of Absolutism, became regular members of the king’s court. Instead, they should be looked upon as historically highly specific prospects for female power that made use of the arts and their specific potential as agency.

In the 1950s the medical student Dietrich Lehmann (1929-2014) did create a series of hand-painted film posters for the student film club at the university of Heidelberg. Hereby, the impressive effect this film club had did reach out way beyond Heidelberg into post-war Federal Germany. The catalogue, which accompanies the eponymous exhibition at the University Museum in Heidelberg, contextualises Lehmann’s posters within the history and the development of the genre of the film poster and discusses in articles as well as in the individual entries the history of the Heidelberg film club as well as that of the German film clubs in general. Moreover, the national as well as local history of film and the personality of Dietrich Lehmann are examined.

Click here to learn more about the exhibition (October 27, 2017 - April 15, 2018).

Under the motto A Future for Our Past, the European Architectural Heritage Year of 1975 was the most important and successful campaign of its time for the preservation and valorisation of architectural heritage in Europe. With its recognition of the importance of urbanistic ensembles, of the plurality within the categories of historic monuments, of citizens’ engagement, and finally, of legal and administrative measures for monument protection, this European campaign had a sustainable impact. Its programmatic approaches and conceptual ideas are of high importance for the present, and motivate new interpretations for the future. With more than 40 contributions this publication is the first comprehensive appraisal of 1975 European Architectural Heritage Year for its 40^th anniversary in 2015.

Die „digitale Revolution“ ist längst in vollem Gange. Für die Denkmalpflege haben digitale Anwendungen neue Perspektiven geöffnet, etwa in der interaktiven Visualisierung verlorener Zustände, im Monitoring bedrohter Stätten und Artefakte oder in der komplexen Vernetzung heterogener Wissensbestände. Deutlicher werden inzwischen auch Grenzen und ungelöste Probleme im Einsatz digitaler Technologien, etwa was die Nachhaltigkeit der rapide wachsenden Datenmengen betrifft.
Doch haben wir es in Bezug auf die Digitalisierung nicht in erster Linie mit einer nur „technischen“ Neuerung zu tun. So wird das Bemühen um das digitale Erbe, mit dem Auftrag zur Dokumentation, Erforschung und Publizierung von Kulturgütern, nicht nur die Institution Museum transformieren. Zu beobachten ist auch, dass sich mit der neuen Fülle an digital erzeugten Bildern die wissenschaftlichen Standards verändern. Ein weiterer unterschätzter Aspekt der digitalen Revolution ist eine Umschichtung der Aufmerksamkeiten auf dem „Markt“ der Wissenschaften.
Die wohl auffälligste Folge des digitalen Versprechens einer genauen und verlustfreien Reproduktion des Verlorenen ist, dass bei jeder spektakulären Zerstörung von bekannten Monumenten reflexhaft die Forderung nach einer Rekonstruktion aufkommt. Deutlich wird hier, dass dem Digitalen eine innere Affinität zur Rekonstruktion innewohnt, insofern seine Leistungsfähigkeit in der Übersetzung aller Informationen in einen binären Code, in der angeblich verlustfreien Speicherung und Kopie beruht. Im digitalen Zeitalter wird die Unterscheidung von Original und Kopie so an Relevanz verlieren – auch zu dem Preis einer totalen Manipulierbarkeit der Daten, wie der Realität. (Gerhard Vinken)

It took generations for the Cathedral of Auxerre to be completed and yet the building shows a remarkable homogeneity. Along with the architecture, particularly the numerous cycles of images deserve recognition. These "talking Pictures" are not merely decorative elements but integral components of the bishop`s church. It is the interaction between many singular pieces of art by which the Cathedral Saint-Étienne conveys a realistic impression of the complexity of medieval sacral buildings and the religiousness of an urban society in the 13^th century.

Die Schausammlungen des Germanischen Nationalmuseums, Band 3

This title accompanies the permanent exhibition at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum on art and cultural history of the German-speaking world during the 16^th to 18^th centuries. The exhibition has been on display since 2010. It features about 1,000 exhibits in 33 rooms and addresses central themes of the early modern period such as collecting and presenting, the reception of antiquity and nature studies, the correlation between art and religion and the changing image of humanity. The complementing publication includes papers that deal with these key themes in a detailed manner. It also comprises a scientific catalogue of all exhibits. Paintings and sculptures, including masterpieces by Albrecht Dürer, Peter Vischer, Lucas Cranach or Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, as well as stained glasses, graphic prints and illustrated books, art handicraft, textiles, jewellery, medals, furniture and musical instruments are being put into their artistic and historical contexts on the basis of the most recent research. In this attractively designed volume about two thirds of the 1,000 exhibits are being presented in high quality colour prints.