Bröhan Museum
In 1983, the Bröhan Museum opened in its current space, which belongs to the Charlottenburg Palace ensemble and was originally built for the guard regiment.
[1] In the mid-1960s Bröhan's interest as a collector shifted towards Art Nouveau works which had by that point largely been forgotten about: "I realised that in the era around 1900 lay a hardly-known treasure only waiting to be discovered".
On 14 October 1983, the museum moved to its current location at Schloßstraße 1a, a former barracks building that belonged to the ensemble of the Charlottenburg Palace.
It includes furniture, porcelain, glassware, ceramics, metalware, light art, and textiles as well as graphic design, painting, and sculpture.
Art Deco is represented in the collection of the Bröhan Museum by French furniture ensembles by Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, the house of Dominique and Süe et Mare, amongst others.
Leading designers coming from the circles of the Deutscher Werkbund – including Peter Behrens, Richard Riemerschmid, Bruno Paul and Wilhelm Wagenfeld – and working in cooperation with companies such as Café HAG and AEG (Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft) are represented in the collection through furniture, graphic works, ceramics, glass, and metalwork.
Further Secessionist artists in the collection include Dora Hitz, Käthe Kollwitz, Franz Skarbina and Martin Brandenburg.
Thus, the collection retraces the artistic development from Impressionism and Symbolism to Expressionism, the latter being represented by Wilhelm Kohlhoff and Bruno Krauskopf, among others.
Comprising a varied programme for children, young people, and adults, education and outreach are an integral part of the Bröhan Museum.
New programmes taking place outside the museum are also developed in order to enable a diverse audience to actively participate in museum-specific subjects.
Fulfilling its obligations in accordance with the Washington Declaration, the Bröhan Museum is committed to provenance research with the aim of reconstructing the history of its collection objects and identifying former owners wherever and whenever possible.
The museum takes special care and attention to determine whether any of these former owners lost possession of their art due to the persecution by the Nazi or GDR regimes.
