Augustiner Museum

The Augustiner Museum is the principal art museum of Freiburg im Breisgau in Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Germany. Housed in a former Augustinian monastery, it holds one of the most significant collections on the Upper Rhine, spanning from medieval art through the Baroque period to nineteenth-century painting. The museum is municipally owned and, through its holdings, effectively serves the role of a state museum for the former territory of Baden. Since 2004 it has undergone an extensive three-phase renovation and expansion that has gradually restored full public access to the historic complex.

The museum's origins lie in the municipal collections begun in the 1880s under Lord Mayor Otto Winterer, who sought a central museum building for the city's holdings. The former Augustinian eremitic monastery, first documented in 1278, was selected for this purpose after the city theater vacated the church in 1910. Architect Rudolf Schmidt drafted conversion plans in 1909, and work began in 1914, but the First World War halted construction and severely limited funds, forcing provisional execution with modest materials. Architectural historian Karl Gruber resumed the project in 1919, and the museum opened in November 1923. Gruber's approach preserved the historic fabric rather than replacing it with a new building as originally planned. The first director, Werner Noack (1922-1953), steered the institution toward regional art, establishing its scholarly profile. During the Nazi era, the museum suffered heavy losses when its modern art holdings were condemned as degenerate; in 1937 works by artists including Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Lyonel Feininger, and Karl Hofer were seized and nearly all destroyed. The most valuable collections were secured before the outbreak of war in 1939, and bomb damage remained limited, though an eastern wing was hit. The building remained in its provisional state for decades, with some wings closed due to contamination from wood preservatives. A comprehensive reconstruction was approved in 2002 and began in 2004 under Frankfurt architect Christoph Mäckler. The first phase, completed in 2010, reopened the church building; the second phase, the Haus der Graphischen Sammlung on Salzstraße, was finished in 2015; and the third phase, renovating the convent building, was completed with a ceremonial opening on 27 February 2026.

The Augustiner Museum's collections cover art and cultural history from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, with particular strength in Upper Rhine art from the medieval period through the Baroque. The holdings include medieval and early Renaissance religious works, Baroque painting and sculpture, and nineteenth-century painting. A major component is the graphic arts collection, comprising more than 70,000 prints and drawings. The museum also preserves decorative arts, domestic artifacts from the Black Forest region, coins, timepieces, a fourteenth-century carpet, and a library of art and cultural history. Since the 1920s it has shown the collections of the Freiburg Archdiocesan Museum, which lacks its own building, and it receives significant loans from the Münsterfabrikfonds and the Adelhausen Foundation. The Museum of Municipal History was a department until its closure in late 2024, after which its objects were relocated to a new city history department in the museum's west wing. Since 2025 the museum has also administered the Documentation Center National Socialism Freiburg im Breisgau in the former traffic office at Rotteckring.

The sculpture hall in the former church nave displays ten large stone prophets from Freiburg Cathedral, four meters high, together with the Coronation of the Virgin and gargoyles representing five of the seven deadly sins, all moved there for protection from weather and pollution. The church choir houses a Baroque organ by Welte & Sons with an exterior from the 1730s. Among the paintings are works by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Hans Baldung Grien, Matthias Grünewald, the Master of the Housebook, Anselm Feuerbach, Hans Thoma, and Franz Xaver Winterhalter. Notable individual works include a Palm Sunday Christ of 1350-1360 and a Passion Altarpiece by the Master of the Housebook from around 1480. The reopened museum added a treasury chamber displaying gold and silverwork and rock crystal objects.

The building is a former Augustinian eremitic monastery dating substantially from the fourteenth century, with a Gothic cloister. Its choir roof truss is, after that of Freiburg Cathedral, the oldest in the city. The structure was modestly Baroque-ified after a fire in the eighteenth century. Following secularization it became municipal property; in the early nineteenth century the church was converted to a theater while other rooms served as barracks and schoolrooms. The 2004-2026 renovation by Christoph Mäckler transformed the complex into a modern museum while preserving historic substance. The first phase restored the church building, installing an elevator for barrier-free access, circular galleries, additional basement exhibition space for special shows, and a painting gallery in the attic. A café was opened in the former treasury and the cloister on the main floor. The second phase replaced the 1920 gatehouse with a new building on Salzstraße to house the graphic arts collection and delivery facilities, completed in 2015 at a cost of 15.3 million euros. The third phase renovated the cloister building and three old cellars.

The Augustiner Museum is located on Münsterplatz in the center of Freiburg im Breisgau. It is owned by the city of Freiburg and serves as the city's principal museum. The first phase reopened on 23 March 2010, and the museum was recognized by the British Guild of Travel Writers as one of the best new tourist attractions worldwide that year. Following completion of the third construction phase, the museum has been fully accessible to the public since 28 February 2026.