The Bröhan Museum is a museum of art and design in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. It is devoted to Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...

, Art Deco

Art Deco

Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...

 and functionalism

Functionalism

Functionalism may refer to:* Functionalism , or structural functionalism, a theoretical tradition within sociology and anthropology* Functionalism * Functionalism...

, and occupies a late-classicist former barracks in Charlottenburg

Charlottenburg

Charlottenburg is a locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, named after Queen consort Sophia Charlotte...

, opposite Charlottenburg Palace

Charlottenburg Palace

Charlottenburg Palace is the largest palace in Berlin, Germany, and the only royal residency in the city dating back to the time of the Hohenzollern family. It is located in the Charlottenburg district of the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf burough.The palace was built at the end of the 17th century...

.

The museum is organised into "room ensembles", each containing examples of art, design and furniture from a particular phase in late-19th/early-20th century art history. Glassware, metalware and ceramics are displayed alongside paintings, in rooms furnished and decorated accordingly. The museum also hosts temporary exhibitions on related themes.

Many major figures from the history of decorative art and furniture-making are represented, including Friedrich Adler

Friedrich Adler (artist)

Friedrich Adler, , was a German academic, artist and designer. He was especially renowned for his accomplishments in designing metalwork in the Art nouveau and Art deco styles; he was also the first designer to use bakelite....

, Peter Behrens

Peter Behrens

Peter Behrens was a German architect and designer. He was important for the modernist movement, as several of the movements leading names worked for him when they were young.-Biography:Behrens attended the Christianeum Hamburg from September 1877 until Easter 1882...

, Emile Gallé

Émile Gallé

Émile Gallé was a French artist who worked in glass, and is considered to be one of the major forces in the French Art Nouveau movement.- Biography :...

, Josef Hoffmann

Josef Hoffmann

Josef Hoffmann was an Austrian architect and designer of consumer goods.- Biography :...

, Georg Jensen

Georg Jensen

Georg Arthur Jensen was a Danish silversmith.Born in 1866, Jensen was the son of a knife grinder in the town of Raadvad just to the north of Copenhagen. Jensen began his training in goldsmithing at the age of 14 in Copenhagen...

, Archibald Knox

Archibald Knox (designer)

Archibald Knox , was a Manx art nouveau designer of Scottish descent....

, Bruno Paul

Bruno Paul

Bruno Paul was a German architect, illustrator, interior designer, and furniture designer.Bruno Paul was born in Seifhennersdorf, a village in rural Saxony, in 1874. His father was an independent tradesman, craftsman, and dealer in building materials...

, and Henry van de Velde

Henry van de Velde

Henry Clemens Van de Velde was a Belgian Flemish painter, architect and interior designer. Together with Victor Horta and Paul Hankar he could be considered one of the main founders and representatives of Art Nouveau in Belgium...

.

The painting collection is focused on the Berlin Secession

Berlin Secession

The Berlin Secession was an art association founded by Berlin artists in 1898 as an alternative to the conservative state-run Association of Berlin Artists. That year the official salon jury rejected a landscape by Walter Leistikow, who was a key figure amongst a group of young artists interested...

, and includes Hans Baluschek

Hans Baluschek

Hans Baluschek was a well-known German painter and writer, a member of Berlin Secession.He is known for his illustrations of the fairy tale Peter and Anneli's Journey to the Moon.thumb|260px|Selfportrait, 1918...

, Walter Leistikow

Walter Leistikow

Walter Leistikow was a German artist from Bromberg .After having been dismissed by the Academy in Berlin for lack of talent, he studied with Hermann Eschke and the Norwegian painter Hans Fredrik Gude....

, Lesser Ury

Lesser Ury

Lesser Ury was a German Impressionist painter and printmaker.He was born Leo Lesser Ury in Birnbaum, the son of a baker whose death in 1872 was followed by the Ury family's move to Berlin. In 1878 Lesser left school to apprentice with a tradesman, and the next year he went to Düsseldorf to study...

 and Karl Hagemeister.

The museum's founder, Karl H. Bröhan, donated his collection to the city of Berlin in 1981. It had already been on display in Dahlem

Dahlem (Berlin)

Dahlem is a locality of the Steglitz-Zehlendorf borough in southwestern Berlin. Until Berlin's 2001 administrative reform it was a part of the former borough of Zehlendorf. Dahlem is one of the most affluent parts of the city and home to the main campus of the Free University of Berlin with the...

since 1973, before moving into its current location in 1983.

Further reading

• 30 Jahre Bröhan-Museum Berlin. Kunsthandwerk und Industriedesign. Bildergalerie. Berlin/Leipzig, 2002, ISBN 3-9807894-2-X.
• Bröhan-Museum Berlin – Jugendstil – Art Déco – Funktionalismus. Prestel, Munich, 2006, ISBN 3-7913-3573-1.