Historical Museum Frankfurt

The Historical Museum (Historisches Museum) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, is a cultural institution dedicated to preserving and interpreting the history of Frankfurt and the broader German nation. Founded in 1878, the museum serves as an educational institution, maintaining the memory of the city's heritage, particularly its era as the Free City of Frankfurt. Its diverse holdings encompass photographs, paintings, graphic arts, ceramics, furniture, fashion and textiles, musical instruments, numismatics, toys, and sculptures. Today, the museum continues to fulfill its foundational educational mandate through permanent chronological displays and special exhibitions.

The museum was established in 1877 and 1878 through civic initiatives with the mission to acquire cultural and art antiquities focusing on Frankfurt and its surroundings, and to make them useful through scientific research. After World War I, the institution narrowed its focus to a local Frankfurt homeland museum, selling significant exhibits or transferring them to other institutions, such as the Stadel and the Museum of Applied Arts. In 1934, it was renamed the City History Museum, and in 1937, its archaeological department became the independent Museum of Pre- and Early History. During the 1944 air raids on Frankfurt, the historic old city buildings housing the exhibitions, including the Leinwandhaus, were destroyed. All files, parts of the library, and fixed exhibits were lost. While most exhibits had been outsourced in 1942, 95 paintings were lost and remain missing, including Erich Grube's Revolutionary Popular Assembly in the Ostpark on November 9, 1918. Postwar, the museum reverted to its original name and educational mission, moving into the Saalhof in 1955 and fully reopening there in 1957. A brutalist concrete extension opened in 1972, sparking intense public controversy over its anti-capitalist, socially focused exhibition design, which prioritized sociopolitical learning goals over original objects. This led to the Frankfurt museum controversy, which ultimately solidified the concept of museums as educational sites requiring contextualization of historical exhibits. The brutalist building was demolished in 2011, and after extensive renovations, the renovated old building reopened on May 26, 2012, followed by a new building on October 7, 2017.

The museum's collection is organized into several permanent chronological exhibitions. These cover Medieval Frankfurt, the Late Middle Ages, the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, the nineteenth-century city, and its development as a metropolis from 1866 to 2001. The overall holdings are highly diverse, comprising photographs, paintings, graphic arts, ceramics, furniture, fashion and textiles, musical instruments, numismatics, toys, and sculptures. The painting collection alone includes approximately 3,200 works. Its core originates from donations by Prince Primate Carl von Dalberg, featuring works acquired during the secularization of churches and religious properties. The Prehn collection, donated in 1839, contains over 800 miniature paintings in a miniature cabinet, alongside German and Dutch paintings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Another 1845 donation comprises over 200 paintings by local and Dutch painters from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Significant works within the painting collection stem from the secularization of religious properties, including pieces attributed to Albrecht Durer, Mathias Grunewald, Hans Baldung Grien, Hans Holbein the Elder, and the Master of Frankfurt. Among the notable losses from the 1944 bombing are three paintings still listed as missing: Erich Grube's Revolutionary Popular Assembly in the Ostpark on November 9, 1918, Mateo Cristiani's Frankfurt Seen from the Goethe Tower, and Joseph Kaspar Correggio's Battery of Field Artillery Regiment 63. Outside the museum entrance stood the larger-than-life sculpture of Charlemagne, carved from Main sandstone in 1843 by sculptor Johann Nepomuk Zwerger, until its removal in May 2011.

The museum is situated in the Frankfurt Altstadt south of the Romerberg, positioned between the Alte Nikolaikirche and the Mainkai. Following wartime destruction, the institution relocated to the historic Saalhof complex, with the administration and graphic collection moving into the Burnitzbau in November 1955 and the Bernusbau serving as a depot from March 1956. The Staufer-era Saalhof chapel remained a ruin until its renovation between 1966 and 1967. The 1972 brutalist concrete extension, built on Saalgasse, required the demolition of the surviving classicist Haus Freudenberg and a Gothic gate entrance. Due to public criticism of the windowless concrete structure, the city decided in February 2007 to replace it with a design by the Stuttgart architecture firm Lederer+Ragnarsdottir+Oei. The new building features a sandstone facade intended to integrate better with the historic surroundings of the Romerberg, the adjacent Haus Wertheim, and the Alte Nikolaikirche. This expansion increased the exhibition space to approximately 5,000 square meters for the permanent exhibition and 800 to 1,000 square meters for temporary exhibitions.

The Historical Museum Frankfurt is located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in the historic Altstadt district south of the Romerberg. The institution operates as a public educational venue, open to visitors with both its permanent chronological displays and rotating special exhibitions. Further details regarding access, current exhibitions, and opening hours are provided on its official website.