Städel Institute

The Städel, officially the Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, is an art museum in Frankfurt am Main, with one of the most important collections in Germany. The Städel owns 2,700 paintings (of which 600 are displayed) and a collection of 100,000 drawings and prints as well as 600 sculptures. It has around 4,000 m² of display and a library of 100,000 books and 400 periodicals.

The Städel was honoured as “Museum of the Year 2012” by the German art critics association AICA in 2012. In the same year the museum recorded the highest attendance figures in its history, of 447,395 visitors

The Städel was founded in 1815 by the Frankfurt banker and merchant Johann Friedrich Städel. In 1878, a new building, designed according to the Gründerzeit style, was erected on Schaumainkai street, presently the major museum district. By the start of the 20th century, the gallery was among the most prominent German collections of classic Pan-European art; the other such collections open to the public were the Dresden Gallery, the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, and the Altes Museum in Berlin.

World War II

In 1937, 77 paintings and 700 prints were confiscated from the museum when the National Socialists declared them "degenerate art".

In 1939, the collection was moved out of Frankfurt to protect it from damage in World War II. The collection of the Staedel, officially known as the Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie of Frankfurt, was removed from the museum to avoid destruction from the Allied bombings, and the collection was stored in the Schloss Rossbach, a castle owned by the Baron Thüngen near Bad Brückenau in Bavaria. There, the museum’s paintings and library were discovered by Lt. Thomas Carr Howe, USN, of the American Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives program. Although the Baron von Thüngen and his wife were uncooperative with the Americans, Frau Dr. Holzinger, a licensed physician and the Swiss wife of the Staedel museum director, was present at the site and assisted with the cataloging and the removal of the items to the Munich Central Collecting Point. Lt. Howe said, “The first room to be inspected was a library adjoining the sitting room in which we had been waiting. Here we found a quantity of excellent French Impressionist paintings, all from the permanent collection of the Staedel, and a considerable number of fine Old Master drawings. Most of these were likewise the property of the museum, but a few – I remember one superb Rembrandt sketch – appeared to have come from Switzerland. Those would, of course, have to be looked into later, to determine their exact origin and how they came to be on loan to the museum. But for the moment we were concerned primarily with storage conditions and the problem of security. In another room we found an enormous collection of books, the library of one of the Frankfurt museums. In a third we encountered an array of medieval sculpture – saints all sizes and description, some of carved wood, others of stone, plain or polychromed. These too, were of museum origin. The last storage room was below ground, a vast, cavernous chamber beneath the house. Here was row upon row of pictures, stacked in two tiers down the center of the room and also along two sides. From what we could make of them in the poor light, they were not of high quality. During the summer months they would be alright in the underground room, but we thought the place would be very damp in the winter. Frau Holzinger assured us that this was so and that the pictures should be removed before the bad weather set in.”

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Wikipedia