In his autobiography, the first director of the Kestner Museum, Carl Schuchhardt, marvelled at Friedrich Culemann's collecting activities. It was astonishing "how a human life could bring together such a wealth in the various fields and such closed sequences of valuable things." When Carl Schuchhardt took up his new post in his old home country in 1888, one of his most noble tasks was to form a museum from two collections, August Kestner's and Friedrich Culemann's. He vividly recounts his visits to August Kestner's and Friedrich Culemann's collections. He vividly recounts his visits to the 'executors' of these collections, Hermann Kestner and Dora Culemann. It was the unmarried daughter of the printer and school senator who, according to Schuchhardt, had been 'helper and secretary in the collecting'. [...]
When Friedrich Culemann died on 6 December 1886, his heirs had the art collection valued at 750,000 marks by the Cologne Kunsthaus Lempertz. The City of Hanover offered the community of heirs a sum of 600,000 marks, and Wilhelm Bode (1845-1929), later Director General of the Royal Museums in Berlin, confirmed its value after an appraisal. It was only through the Prussian state government's assumption of half of the purchase price that the city's magistrate was able to approve the remaining 300,000 marks. Thus, in May 1887, the Culemann Collection became the property of the city with the obligation: "to incorporate and preserve the object of purchase as a whole under the name 'Culemann Collection' for the municipal museum in Hanover."
Carl Schuchhardt was the first to view and arrange the collection, to create individual departments and at the same time to preserve and expand the character of the collections. Nevertheless, there was no room in a modern museum for the motivations and suggestions that prompted Culemann to build up his comprehensive and wide-ranging collection. The inner context of the collection had ceased to exist with its collector. (T. Henke)
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