Page - 396 - in Die kaiserliche Gemäldegalerie in Wien und die Anfänge des öffentlichen Kunstmuseums - Europäische Museumskultur um 1800, Volume 2

396 Meijers From an International Perspective Apart from Emperor Franz Joseph, no European ruler in the course of the nineteenth cen- tury commissioned an encyclopedic art museum – with one exception. It is true that King Frederick William IV of Prussia did so, but the dynasty did not play such a crucial role there. (Fig. 10) Once again a comparison with this Berlin museum serves to cast light on the very particular character of the situation in Vienna. Arriving in Berlin in the summer of 1855, our British art-lover would have been able to vi- sit Friedrich August Stüler’s newly opened Neues Museum (built 1841–1855/59), where a range of collections representing various cultural fields was on display. The new building was connected by an overhead bridge to Schinkel’s Altes Museum opened shortly before, in 1830, which was deliberately dedicated exclusively to painting and original sculptures, cameos, coins, vases and other precious objects from classical antiquity. However, when the Neues Museum was added, the two museums with their different specializations – art and history – formed a new entity, with the two parts complementing each other.42 After first admiring the originals from classical antiquity, the 1855 visitor could walk from the painting gallery of the Altes Museum by way of the overhead bridge, enter the chrono logical survey of plaster casts in the Neues Museum, (Fig. 11) and then decide to go down to the departments of Egyptian antiquities, Vaterländische Altertümer and ethnological objects. Or alternately he could go up to the former Brandenburg Kunstkammer and the cab inet of drawings and prints. Fig. 11 Neues Museum in Berlin, department of plaster casts: Roman Room. Steel engraving from: Die Königlichen Museen in Berlin, Leipzig/Berlin: Verlag der Englischen Kunst-Anstalt [1855]