Books, books, books

The Otto Schäfer Museum is dedicated to book art, graphic arts and applied arts. The industrialist Otto Schäfer (1912–2000) began collecting printed graphic arts in his youth. In 1951, he acquired his first book illustrated with woodcuts: The famous Schedel’s Chronicle of the World, printed in Nuremberg in 1493.

Today the museum enshrines about a thousand illustrated prints, of which most are printed in the 15th and 16th centuries. Amongst the collection’s artists are Michael Wolgemut, Albrecht Dürer, Hans Baldung Grien, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Hans Holbein the Younger, Matthäus Merian the Elder, Caspar David Friedrich, Adolph Menzel, Max Slevogt, Lovis Corinth, Aristide Maillol and H. A. P. Grieshaber.

Otto Schäfer dedicated another collection to German literature. It features around 5,000 volumes, for the most part first editions from the Goethe era. But the collector’s interest was also devoted to precious bindings, and in addition to innumerable, expensive gold-embossed leather-bound volumes attests to the binding art of bygone centuries.

The collection combines about one thousand works on paper with contemporary graphic arts (amongst others, Olaf Gulbransson, Alfred Hrdlicka or Ernst Fuchs). The museum’s newest section is dedicated to antique glass.