Museum of Musical Instruments of Leipzig University

The Museum of Musical Instruments of the University of Leipzig (German: Museum für Musikinstrumente der Universität Leipzig) is a museum in Leipzig, Germany. It is located on Johannisplatz, near the city centre. The museum belongs to the University of Leipzig and is also part of the Grassi Museum, whose other members are the Museum of Ethnography and the Museum of Applied Arts.

It is one of the largest music instrument museums in Europe, alongside those of Brussels and of Paris. Its collection of around 10,000 objects includes valuable instruments from Europe and beyond, as well as music-related items from the Renaissance, the Baroque, and Bach's Leipzig period.

In 1886 the Dutchman Paul de Wit opened a museum of historic musical instruments in Leipzig, but he sold the collection to the paper merchant Wilhelm Heyer in 1905. The "Wilhelm Heyer Museum of Music History" opened in 1913, containing De Wit's collection alongside that of the Florentine Baron Alessandro Kraus and keyboard instruments from the Prussian manufacturer Ibach. The collection was bought by the University of Leipzig in 1926, paid for partly by the State of Saxony and partly by the publisher C.F. Peters, and was opened in the New Grassi Museum in 1929.

Parts of the collection were removed for safekeeping during World War II, but a large number of the remaining items were destroyed during a bomb raid on the building in 1943, including the Ibach pianos, the archive and the library. After the war it transpired that the items which had been removed were also significantly damaged or lost, owing to improper storage or theft.

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