Situated at the southern end of the Old Town in Nuremberg, the Germanic National Museum, which was established to preserve and promote Germanic culture, houses objects in its collection that demonstrate the deep cultural and historical links between the former Poland and the former Reich.

History of the collection

The Germanic National Museum, founded in 1852, was established on the initiative of the Franconian collector Hans von und zu Aufseß (1801-1872). In the 1830s, Aufseß, who had been striving for years to establish a museum dedicated to German history, made his private collection of German archival material, documents and works of art available to a wider public in Nuremberg. In parallel, he began to develop the concept of a Germanic museum that would preserve and promote monuments from German-speaking areas, becoming a place for the 'unification of literary and artistic sources'. The final impetus for this idea came with the failure of the 1848 project for the unification of the German states.

In 1857, the museum was given its headquarters in a fourteenth-century architectural complex comprising the former Carthusian church and monastery. Due to the dynamic growth of the collection, the museum's premises were significantly expanded in the 20th century.

Column with a Polish sentence

In 1993, the sculptural installation 'The Way of Human Rights', designed by Israeli artist Dani Karavan (1930-2021), was placed in front of the museum entrance. The installation consists of 30 columns, symbolising the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Each column bears an inscription in German and in one of 30 foreign languages. The column with the sentiment in Polish contains a passage from the sixth article of the Convention: "Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere of his legal personality". The placement of this installation in the heart of Nuremberg has a special symbolic overtone because of the trials against the criminals of the Third Reich that took place nearby, before the International Military Tribunal between 1945 and 1949.

Collection of Polonica

The Germanic National Museum has a rich collection of Germanic objects related to Polish rulers, engravings by Polish artists created in Germany or altar paintings by Jan Polak (ca. 1435-1519), who created in Germany.

One of the most valuable exhibits related to Poland is a polychrome model of a Renaissance tomb sculpture by Mikołaj Herburt Odnowski (1482-1555), made of linden wood. Presented in the part of the permanent exhibition in the museum's west wing, the model was used in 1551 to make a brass cast of Odnowski's sepulchral figure by Pankracy Labenwolf, a German engraver operating in Nuremberg, which was deposited in Lviv's Latin Cathedral after the magnate's death. The depiction of a recumbent nobleman immersed in sleep wearing armour, with his head supported on his hand, is reminiscent of the iconography of Italian tomb figures. This type of tombstone, commissioned by Odnowski during his lifetime, was very popular in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th century. It owed its popularity to the Italian-born Queen Bona Sforza d'Aragona, who brought Italian artists to Poland.

Mikołaj Odnowski, coat of arms Herburt, belonged to the group of close advisors of Queen Bona. In the years 1535-1555, he held various political posts, including castellan of Przemyśl, starosta of Krasnostaw, governor of Sandomierz, governor of Cracow, and starosta general of Rus.