Caricatura Museum Frankfurt

The Caricatura Museum Frankfurt, officially Caricatura Museum für Komische Kunst, is a museum dedicated to comic and satirical art located in Frankfurt am Main, Hesse, Germany. Situated on the Museumsufer (Museum Riverbank), it is the only museum of the fine art of comics in Europe and holds the highest density of humor in the global museum landscape. The museum preserves and presents the legacy of the Neue Frankfurter Schule (New Frankfurt School), a group of artists and authors who, since the founding of the satire magazines Pardon and Titanic, established Frankfurt as Germany's official 'capital of satire.' Opened in 2008 after eight years of preparatory work, the museum has become a competence center for comical art with nationwide significance.

The origins of the museum trace to the late 1990s, when the idea of permanently honoring the satirical drawings of the Neue Frankfurter Schule at their place of origin took hold. Achim Frenz, co-founder of the Caricatura Galerie Kassel, convinced Frankfurt's Kulturdezernent Hans-Bernhard Nordhoff to support establishing a dedicated museum. Nordhoff commissioned Frenz to build a collection, and from 2000 to 2008 the Caricatura operated as a department within the Historical Museum Frankfurt, hosting 21 exhibitions and 30 events that demonstrated what a museum of comical art could mean for the city. During this period, the originally favored location on the Kulturmeile in Braubachstraße was abandoned after Nordhoff lost office in 2006. On 1 October 2008, the Caricatura Museum Frankfurt opened in its own premises in the restored Leinwandhaus at Weckmarkt 17 in Frankfurt's Altstadt, under Kulturdezernent Felix Semmelroth and as an external branch of the Historical Museum. Achim Frenz led the museum until his retirement in autumn 2023; Martin Sonntag succeeded him in January 2024. A pivotal moment came in 2018 when Frenz publicly demanded the autonomy that had been planned from the beginning, supported by prominent artists including Hans Traxler, Pitt Knorr, Bernd Eilert, and Rudi Hurzlmeier. The Kulturamt Frankfurt granted this independence in April 2019. The museum celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2018, and in 2020 it received the Hessian Culture Prize, at 45,000 euros the highest-endowed cultural prize in Germany, jointly with the Caricatura, Galerie für Komische Kunst Kassel. In 2025, the museum was entrusted with Loriot's complete artistic estate as a permanent loan.

The museum's collection is overwhelmingly oriented toward German-speaking artists and centers on the Neue Frankfurter Schule. It comprises more than 10,000 originals by the school's artists and approximately 11,000 drawings by other cartoonists, though earlier figures cited about 7,000 originals and 4,000 additional drawings before the major expansion. The core group consists of the five artists F. W. Bernstein, Robert Gernhardt, Chlodwig Poth, Hans Traxler, and F. K. Waechter, together with authors Bernd Eilert, Eckhard Henscheid, and Pit Knorr. Beyond this nucleus, the collection includes works by Felix Mussil, Marie Marcks, Ernst Kahl, and Ralf König among others. Since 2021, a newly created acquisition budget has allowed comprehensive expansion with works by contemporary artists including Greser & Lenz, Franziska Becker, Bernd Eilert, Gerhard Seyfried, Rudi Hurzlmeier, Bernd Pfarr, and Ernst Kahl. The museum is also building a literature archive for comical literature, with initial acquisitions including a convolut from Pit Knorr containing the first manuscript of the screenplay for Otto, Der Film (1985). Since 2024, the Caricatura Salon on the first floor presents changing cabinet exhibitions alongside the permanent collection display.

The permanent exhibition on the first floor presents works by the five core Neue Frankfurter Schule artists, F. W. Bernstein, Robert Gernhardt, Chlodwig Poth, Hans Traxler, and F. K. Waechter, arranged in five cabinets. To maximize the visibility of the collection and for conservation reasons, this hanging is changed twice yearly. The museum's most celebrated external acquisition is the complete artistic estate of Vicco von Bülow, known as Loriot, which arrived as a permanent loan in 2025, timed for what would have been his 102nd birthday. Plans exist to display this collection in a separate external venue in the future. Temporary exhibitions since 2008 have featured major figures in comical art including Bernd Pfarr, Greser & Lenz, Hans Traxler, ATAK and Fil, Titanic magazine's 30-year retrospective, Chlodwig Poth, Franziska Becker, Guido Sieber and Franz Dobler, Jean-Marc Reiser, Gerhard Haderer, Tomi Ungerer, Nikolaus Heidelbach, Marie Marcks, Ralf König, Kurt Halbritter, Kamagurka, Gerhard Glück, Gerhard Seyfried, Detlef Beck, Sebastian Krüger, Stern-Humor, Ari Plikat, Frank Hoppmann, Robert Gernhardt, Otto, Volker Kriegel, and Ernst Kahl. The museum also manages, in cooperation with the city government, an open-air exhibition of comical sculptures in the Frankfurter GrünGürtel landscape park.

The Caricatura Museum occupies the Leinwandhaus at Weckmarkt 17 in Frankfurt's Altstadt, a building with a history dating to around 1400. Over the centuries it served various purposes including cloth trading, court and prison, lazaretto and slaughterhouse, hostel for city scribes and the mentally ill, city museum, and art gallery. It was one of the last war ruins to be rebuilt in 1984 and is now a protected historic monument. The building was the first dedicated home of the Historical Museum in 1892. The conversion for the Caricatura Museum was planned by the Eichstätt architecture firm Diezinger + Kramer in 2007-2008, winning them the best architect award in 2011, a Düsseldorf prize given 74 times that year from 298 submissions, including 12 gold awards. The ground floor contains a 250-square-meter, six-meter-high hall with a newly built gallery for temporary exhibitions and events. The first floor holds the most beautiful room of the building, with seven tall windows facing the cathedral, housing the collection exhibition. The second floor contains a lounge and the Library of Comical Art, currently not publicly accessible but available by appointment. From the lounge, visitors can reach the battlements with views over Weckmarkt. The museum's trademark is a bronze moose sculpture by Hans Traxler standing before the building, wearing trench coat, vest, and hat. Its sandstone pedestal bears a bronze plaque with the names of the eight representatives of the Neue Frankfurter Schule and F. W. Bernstein's motto: 'Die schärfsten Kritiker der Elche / waren früher selber welche.'

The Caricatura Museum Frankfurt is located at Weckmarkt 17, 60311 Frankfurt am Main, on the Museumsufer. It is a municipal museum of the City of Frankfurt, now under the oversight of the Kulturamt Frankfurt since gaining organizational independence from the Historical Museum in April 2019. Public transport access is via U-Bahn lines 4 and 5 (Dom/Römer station) and tram lines 11, 12, and 14 (Römer/Paulskirche). The museum is largely barrier-free with wheelchair-accessible toilets. Admission is free for children and young people under 18. The museum hosts frequent live events including readings, book presentations, and performances. Since 2009, it has organized the three-day Festival der Komik during the Museumsuferfest, featuring satirical stage art moderated by Bernd Gieseking. A shop is available on site. The museum's advisory council, established in 2009 and chaired by Claus Wisser, includes Ina Hartwig, Achim Frenz, Franziska Augstein, Christiane Benner, Gabriela Eick, Nikolaus Hansen, Antje Kunstmann, Oliver Maria Schmitt, Otto Kajan Weixler, and Hans Zippert.