Lisa Kirch Boeken

The Ehrensaal (Hall of Honour) originally distilled to its strongest form the DM‘s message about science and technology. The museum founders intended it to perform an ideological yet apolitical function, a contra-diction that the present study examines through archival material from the museum’s first half-century. Initially the Ehrensaal was meant to parallel and strengthen the museum’s argument that scientists and engineers were just as creative and worthy of veneration as artists. Attempts to make the Ehrensaal a neutral and artistically stunning space ended with the First World War, and developments outside the museum continually enmeshed the room, changing its contents and meaning.

This volume examines the role that Frankfurt am Main played in the rise of the commercial art market in general and in particular of painting and printmaking during the early modern period from 1500–1800. Although the Frankfurt Book Fair remains a major publishing event, art historians have not yet focused sufficiently on its precursor, the Frankfurt fair, an important location for the trade in paintings and prints. What figures and what motives brought artists to Frankfurt and where did they come from? Who intersected with the art market in such areas as commerce or book and intaglio printing? What did elite culture in the city look like, and how did it tie Frankfurt to wider intellectual and artistic circles? How did the change of the place of coronation of the emperors from Aachen to Frankfurt in 1562 with all visitors, coronation feasts and ephemeral art influence the art market?