Culture in Dresden - Museums, Presentations and Collections

Museums, Presentations and Collections

Dresden hosts the enowned Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Dresden State Art Collections). The art collections consist of twelve museums, of which the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister and the Grünes Gewölbe are the best known. This cultural institution is owned by the Free State of Saxony. Many of its museums are located in Dresden Castle and the Zwinger Palace. Some of the museums, such as the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon (Royal Cabinet of Mathematical and Physical Instruments), exhibit art within the context of technology, such as globes, measuring equipment and chronographs. Also known are Galerie Neue Meister (New Masters Gallery), Rüstkammer (Armoury) with the Turkish Chamber, and the Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden (Museum of Ethnology).

Other museums and collections owned by the Free State of Saxony in Dresden are:

• The Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte (State Museum of Prehistory)
• The Staatliche Naturhistorische Sammlungen Dresden (State Collection of Natural History)
• The "Universitätssammlung Kunst + Technik" (Collection of Art and Technology of the Dresden University of Technology)
• Verkehrsmuseum Dresden (Transport Museum)

Dresden hosts the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in the former garrison in the Albertstadt. The book museum of the Saxon State Library presents the famous Dresden Codex.

The former convention house of the Farmer's Estate (called the Landhaus) is now the home of the Dresden City Museum, which exhibits a collection of historical objects and has a smaller collection of paintings. The city has some museums specialising in artists who lived in the city (for example the Carl-Maria-von-Weber-Museum (de) and the Kügelgenhaus (de). Another museum, the Technische Sammlungen (Technical Collection) was established in the Pentacon building, the old factory where Praktika cameras were once built. The collection includes historic cameras, computing technology and entertainment technology.

The Deutsches Hygiene-Museum was founded for mass education in hygiene, health, human biology and medicine. It stood in context of the Dresden industry of medicine and hygiene products and was founded by the industrialist Karl August Lingner (de), who produced Odol (de) hygiene products. The museum's Gläserne Frau, showing the organs of human beings as a see-through sculpture, became world famous. During Nazism, the museum diffused racist theories. A 1934 poster of the museum showed a man with distinctly African features and reads, "If this man had been sterilized there would not have been born ... 12 hereditarily diseased." (sic)

According to the current director Klaus Vogel, "The Hygiene Museum was not a criminal institute in the sense that people were killed here," but "it helped to shape the idea of which lives were worthy and which were worthless."