RESIDENCE AND STUDIO BUILDING

HISTORY OF THE AUGUST MACKE HOUSE

The August Macke House in Bonn is the former home and studio of August Macke, one of the most important and popular German artists of the early 20th century. From early 1911 to August 1914, he lived here with his family and spent his most productive years as an artist.

Since the Macke family moved to Bonn in 1900, the Rhineland city had been the centre of August Macke's life. As a 16-year-old schoolboy, he met 15-year-old Elisabeth Gerhardt here in 1903, his ‘second self’ and later wife, and developed into the artist he is widely known as today. When the young couple returned to Bonn with their little son Walter in the autumn of 1910 after a year's stay in Tegernsee, Elisabeth's family provided them with a small late-classical house on the corner of Bornheimer Strasse and Hochstadenring as their new home. The Gerhardt family had purchased the house, which was then still located on the outskirts of Bonn in a rural area on the grounds of their company, in 1884, along with the land, from farmer Heinrich Wolff, who had it built there in 1877/78 with a barn and stables.

The house has three floors, a basement and an attic, which was converted into a bright studio in the winter of 1910/11 according to Macke's plans. To this end, the roof on the garden side was raised to gable height, a mansard roof with a hipped extension was erected, and large windows were added on the sides and as skylights, creating a slightly angular room measuring a good 40 square metres with optimal lighting conditions. August Macke painted many of his most famous paintings here, including numerous pictures capturing the view from the windows onto the immediate surroundings. He also produced sculptural works and arts and crafts designs here. Together with his friend Franz Marc, he painted the 4 x 2 metre programmatic picture Paradise on a wall in the studio in the autumn of 1912.

August Macke and his wife Elisabeth ran their home in an open and hospitable manner. It was a meeting place for the young Rhineland art scene and the starting point for Macke's tireless art-political activities, which made him one of the most important protagonists of Expressionism.

August Macke & Franz Marc
Wandbild Paradies, 1912
Oil on wall plaster, 398 x 181 cm
Original since 1981 in the LWL Museum of Art and Culture

[Translate to Englisch:] Nach August Mackes Tod

Walter Gerhardt, Wolfgang and Helmut Macke, Walter Macke with Lothar Erdmann and Elisabeth Erdmann Macke in the studio, around 1918

1915–1980

After August Macke's early death in the First World War, Elisabeth lived in the house with her second husband Lothar Erdmann, one of August Macke's closest friends, and their children until the family moved to Berlin in 1925 for work reasons. Except for the studio, the house was rented out. In the 1930s, Macke's younger son Wolfgang lived there temporarily during his studies.

Now widowed for the second time, Elisabeth returned to the former studio, which had been converted into a tiny flat, in 1948 after the Second World War. After her death in 1978, the house was sold and the mural by Macke and Marc was moved to the LWL Museum of Art and Culture in Münster.

Rescue in the 1980s

It is solely thanks to civic engagement that the building was not converted into a restaurant in the 1980s, but was saved from demolition in a sensational rescue operation. With the help of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and a private sponsor, the city of Bonn was able to acquire it in June 1989 without any financial contribution of its own.

After the building was listed as a historic monument and the studio was restored to its original condition, the house was opened to visitors in 1991. The entire infrastructure of a museum was housed here in a very small space. Over eighty special exhibitions on August Macke and his artistic milieu, focusing primarily on the theme of Rhenish Expressionism, cemented the reputation of the small museum, which is run by the non-profit association August Macke Haus and has been supported by the August Macke Haus Foundation of the Sparkasse in Bonn since 1994.

[Translate to Englisch:] Empfangsbereich nach der ersten Sanierung des August Macke Hauses, 2011

Reception area after the first renovation of the August Macke House, 2011

[Translate to Englisch:] Vision des neuen Museumskomplex mit modernem Erweiterungsbau Foto: Architekturbüro KKW

Model of the vision for the new museum complex with modern extension.

Reorientation in the 2000s
The wishes and demands of visitors and public and private lenders ultimately necessitated a redesign. The focus shifted to a structural expansion, which entered the implementation phase in 2004 after the neighbouring property was acquired. The plans were drawn up with the aim of dedicating the former residence and studio exclusively to the life and work of August Macke and making it accessible to all. All other functions were to be relocated to a modern extension that met museum standards.

As part of the planned measures, the artist's house was first extensively renovated and spatially reorganised in 2010/11. Between 2015 and 2017, it finally received a spacious, modern extension designed by Bonn architect Karl-Heinz Schommer and executed by the architectural firm KKW Lüdenscheid.

Funding for this ambitious undertaking was secured with significant support from the Federal Republic of Germany and the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the North Rhine-Westphalia Foundation, the Rhineland Regional Council and numerous private sponsors, as well as through the tireless commitment of the former Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister of the Federal Republic of Germany, Dr Guido Westerwelle. The ground-breaking ceremony took place on 22 June 2015. Construction work was completed in autumn 2017 and the extended building opened as the August Macke House Museum on 3 December.

August Macke House Museum

Directly adjacent to August Macke's former home and studio is a functional building more than three times its size, with a separate floor reserved exclusively for special exhibitions. Storage rooms, administrative offices and an archive containing a collection of autographs enable the museum to carry out its work with the utmost care. Event spaces and a museum education studio, a library, the reception area and shop offer visitors a good infrastructure, complemented by a museum café, a roof terrace and an idyllic garden between the artist's house and the modern extension, which is shielded from the street by a free-standing high glass facade.

The 14 intimate rooms of the residential and studio building house a multimedia and interactive exhibition conceived by Dr Ina Ewers-Schultz and designed by the Bielefeld-based design agency Arndt & Seelig, featuring numerous original works on the life and work of August Macke.

[Translate to Englisch:] Blick in den neuen Sonderausstellungsraum des Museums August Macke Haus

A look inside the new special exhibition room at the August Macke House Museum