Otto Schäfer Museum

The Otto Schäfer Museum is dedicated to book art, graphic arts and applied arts. The industrialist Otto Schäfer (1912 – 2000) began collecting printed graphic arts in his youth. In 1951, he acquired his first book illustrated with woodcuts: The famous “Schedel’s Chronicle of the World”, printed in Nuremberg in 1493. Today the museum enshrines about a thousand illustrated prints, of which most stem from the 15th and 16th centuries.

Otto Schäfer dedicated another collection to German literature. It features around 5,000 volumes, for the most part first editions from the Goethe era. But the collector’s interest was also devoted to precious bindings, and in addition to innumerable, expensive gold-embossed leather-bound volumes attests to the binding art of bygone centuries.

The collection combines about one thousand works on paper with contemporary graphic arts (amongst others, Olaf Gulbransson, Alfred Hrdlicka or Ernst Fuchs). The museum’s newest section is dedicated to antique glass.

Address:
Judithstraße 16 

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday, 14.00 – 17.00; Sunday and holidays, 10.00 – 17.00 

Reading room:
Tuesday – Wednesday, 14.00 – 17.00; by arrangement

Summer break:
15 July up to and including 14 September

Winter break:
1 December up to and including 25 December