Page - 397 - in Die kaiserliche Gemäldegalerie in Wien und die Anfänge des öffentlichen Kunstmuseums - Europäische Museumskultur um 1800, Volume 2

397 Meijers From an International Perspective In Vienna however, on arrival in the Belvedere, the traveller would have recognized few similar- ities. Even though the court cabinets would have been the starting point in both cities, in Berlin there were scarcely any references to the patron Frederick William IV and his dynasty, let alone any exaltation of it as was the case in Vienna.43 The Berlin museum development was originally intended to be a Freistätte, or sanctuary, totally devoted to the arts and sciences. Moreover, if the combination of the Altes and the Neues Museum could already have been called encyclope- dic, then this was not so much in the traditional Kunstkammer sense of the word, but should rather be seen as meaning that it included the whole gamut of modern cultural and historical disciplines, from art history and archaeology by way of Egyptology to national archaeology and ethnology.44 It could in fact be called a scientific museum and this stage was soon to be realized in Vienna too with the new Hofmuseum, but there, as already mentioned, it was permeated with references to the Hapsburg dynasty in both its location and in the building’s decoration.45 Furthermore in Berlin the different departments had already moved to their own, spe- cialized museums by the time that a single all-embracing museum opened its doors in Vienna in 1890/91. For instance, in Berlin the Kunstkammer had already been moved to the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in 1875.46 What was definitely exceptional in Vienna was that a new museum of such an all-embracing nature should actually be built so late in the century, as twin sister to an almost identical natural history museum opposite, and that the departments should have stayed together to the present day. Conclusion: The embedded gallery and the specific history of the Hapsburg museum To sum up briefly then, when the plans for the museum’s new building in Vienna were de- veloped after 1867, not only were they late, but they also took on a form of their own. This was the case in more than one regard. It is of course true that the painting gallery returned to the town centre, as was the trend, and was housed in a new building as a part of the urban renewal plan like everywhere in the German states. Nonetheless there were two crucial differences between Vienna and anywhere else in Europe. Firstly, by moving the collections from the Unteres Belvedere and the Hofburg with it,47 the gallery was made part of a cultural and historical complex with, among other artefacts, Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquities, applied art from the Middle Ages to more recent times, and historical weapons. That was at odds with the pattern of specialization, which had taken place elsewhere in Europe in the same period, since around 1870. Secondly, the collections, including the painting gallery, once again became part of the Hof development, with the construction of a Kaiserforum linking the art history and natural history Hofmuseen with the Hofburg and converting them into the physical and symbolic centre of the new Ringstrasse. This deviated from the pattern of self-determina- tion seen in museums elsewhere, which – physically, administratively and symbolically – were engaged in a process of freeing themselves from their ruler’s sphere of authority. This meant that the Kunsthistorisches Museum didn’t become a museum in the modern sense, but rather a monument to the Hapsburg dynasty or, as Beatrix Kriller puts it, “an imperial palace of the arts, housing the private property of the emperor with its origins in the Hapsburg dynasty and making it public for ‘His peoples’. It reflects a unity of collec- tion, buil ding, decorations and the sovereignty of its builder, so that it can in fact be de- noted as a monument.”48 (Figs. 12 and 13) Both characteristics, I would suggest, had already taken shape in the Belvedere as it was before 1855, and were founded on age-old Hapsburg traditions. Two key quotations confirm this, one by Lhotsky, the other again by Kriller. Even though the picture they give here is of the museum in the form it acquired in the period from 1867 to 1891, their words refer implicitly to a Hapsburg tradition that dates back a long way, even further than 1855 or 1780, which are my self-imposed marker dates.