We are the DDB: The Schloss- und Spielkartenmuseum Altenburg (Castle and Playing Card Museum Altenburg)
The Schloss- und Spielkartenmuseum Altenburg almost classically embodies the type of association within a larger and regionally anchored museum – a „multidisciplinary institution“. It is a municipal and cultural-historical museum with a dominant feature of handicraft. The skat game was invented in Altenburg, and the city can refer to a tradition of playing card production which goes back up to the end of medieval times. Moreover, its architecture, inventory and interior reflect its own history of the house as a residence of a duke house and – if we go back further in time – as a former temporary domicile of electors.
The museum is open to the facets of modern age and the art and handicraft from different times. It is continually devoted to exhibitions with cultural-historical and historical topics.
The museum’s collection derives from different provenience. The museum has an old castle inventory and objects which belonged to the inventory in electoral-ducal times and different centuries. The museum houses paintings, militaria objects but also furniture.
An early form of a deliberately designed collection also includes the ducal armoury and antiquities chamber of the 18th and 19th century. A major part of this collection has survived until today. In its original meaning, the armoury was the storage place for the arms concentrated in the castle area. The local armoury dates back up to the 16th century. In later times, also art and everyday objects as well as contemporary historical objects were placed in the armoury collection.
The porcelain collection of Bernhard August von Lindenaus, mostly Ostasiatica, but also significant early Meissen pieces („Goldchinesen”) found a permanent place in the castle, due to its testamentary disposition. It once formed a part of the armoury collection as well. In addition, there are collection parts which are based on an engaged and exploratory work, particularly in prehistory and early history, of the members of the society of the Osterland at Altenburg who do research on history and ancient times.
The museum’s constitution as from 1919/20 and its targeted collection and exhibition work, in part with different priorities but ultimately without any interruptions until now, proves to be another source for the collections. A summary view indicates that the museum’s collections are especially based on handicraft. Playing cards and skat demand a unique position.
Major collections: handicraft of different classes of material, paintings, graphics, playing cards, porcelain, plastics, textiles, ethnology, furniture, clocks, city history, numismatics, library, toy, militaria, prehistory and early history/archaeology and photography.
All objects of the Schloss- und Spielkartenmuseums Altenburg at the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek