City history: A special exhibition in Bocholt

Once a month, the Bocholt city archive presents the "photo of the month". This time it's about a special art exhibition that was shown at the Kunsthaus in spring 1964.

In the spring of 1964, the city administration, together with the scientific experts Dr Wulf Schadendorf from Nuremberg and Dr Werner Doede from Kassel, prepared an extraordinary and comprehensive exhibition entitled "Contours of the Centre - European Centuries between the Baltic Sea and the Carpathians (1618-1848)".

24 museums and art collections from West Germany, Berlin and Switzerland took part in this exhibition with over 600 exhibits, which was on show at the Bocholter Kunsthaus from 5 May to 21 June 1964.

It was structured according to landscapes as well as art and intellectual history epochs. Baroque architecture as a European movement formed a broader focus of this art exhibition because, according to the organisers, it had almost identical characteristics in Central Germany, Silesia and also in the Kingdom of Poland.

This category included views of sacred and secular buildings, castles and palaces as well as town houses. In addition to graphic works by A. von Menzel, Ludwig Richter and Jeremias Falck, the Hamburger Kunsthalle also provided the painting "Bruchacker mit Blick auf Dresden" by Caspar David Friedrich.

Among the paintings on loan from the Berlin National Gallery was the landscape painting "Rugard on Rügen" by Karl Friedrich Schinkel from 1821. However, the exhibition also centred on portraits of well-known personalities from the period.

Insight into the exhibition room

These included statesmen, regents and clergymen as well as philosophers, poets, painters and architects. A further section was devoted to works of craftsmanship from the porcelain manufactories of Proskau, Meissen, Berlin and Warsaw, which was enriched with selected pieces. Finally, gold and silver vessels from the museums of applied arts in Hamburg, Frankfurt a. M., Munich, Aschaffenburg and Osnabrück completed the exhibition spectrum.

The photo offers an insight into an exhibition room of the Kunsthaus on Salierstraße (today the seat of the music school), which opened in May 1958. A portrait of Melchior Cardinal von Diepenbrock, a clergyman from Bocholt, can be seen on the left. Visitors were offered niches with seating where they could chat or take in what they had seen.

Photo: Stadtarchiv Bocholt, image collection "Konturen der Mitte" No. 2; Text: Wolfgang Tembrink