Schriften zur Geschichte der Berliner Museen
The publication series of the Zentralarchiv offers a platform for scientific publications on the history of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, formerly Royal Museums or Prussian art collections and on their development, which has been closely linked to Berlin since their foundation in 1830. The range of topics in the series is as broad as the Berlin museums themselves with their collections of European and non-European art, archaeology and ethnology. The series includes thematic anthologies, editions of archival sources as well as studies of collections, people, museum buildings or related questions.
The Zentralarchiv sees itself as a "historical memory" of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and as a place where research on museum history is made possible, promoted and published by the archival sources preserved there.
Series editor
Zentralarchiv SMB
Contact
Zentralarchiv der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz
Tel.: +49 30 266 42 5701
Email: za@smb.spk-berlin.de
Published so far
Verhandeln – Kaufen – Sammeln: Ägyptische Objekte und ihre Erwerbungsgeschichten am Beispiel des Ägyptischen Museums in Berlin 1884–1894
Provenance has been in the focus of international museum research and politics for more than a decade. This book analyses acquisition histories of objects in the Berlin Egyptian Museum during the first years of the director Adolf Erman (1854—1937). Therefore, two original documents of the Central Archive of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin have been analysed and published. This allows the identification of individual provenances as well as their acquisition context. The recording of the various art and antiquities markets, the protagonists, museums and their acquisition strategies illustrate the antiquities trade in the 19th century in Egypt and Europe.
Konstantinopel – Samos – Berlin: Verpfändung, Fundteilung und heimliche Ausfuhr von Antiken am Vorabend des Ersten Weltkrieges
The years before World War I were marked by political upheaval and uncertainty in the eastern Mediterranean. 1910–1914 excavations of the Royal Prussian Museums in Berlin took place on the island of Samos. Numerous finds from the excavation reached Berlin, only a part of them by way of the official division of finds. In 1913–1914 Germany also negotiated with the Sublime Porte about the pledging of antiquities from the Archaeological Museum of Constantinople/Istanbul with the aim of permanent possession by the Berlin museums. The articles presented in this volume shed light on the intensive entanglement between politics, business, science and culture in the late phase of the German Reich.
