On the history of the Aue City Museum
The development of the Aue Museum extends from the original creation of a local collection, the founding of the City Museum and, after the Second World War, the opening as a district museum. After the district museum was closed for several years, the museum was reopened in 1973 as a "traditional ore mining site". From 1990 onwards, it was re-profiled as today's Aue City Museum.
As early as 1922, a museum association was founded in Aue with the significant involvement of the teacher and local historian Dr. Siegfried Sieber. Its aim was to build a museum in Aue that would document the cultural and economic development of the city and its surroundings. In 1923, an exhibition was shown in the town hall on the occasion of Aue's 750th anniversary. A collection was built up to create the basis for a permanent museum. From 1923 to the mid-1930s, the Auer Museum Association held several exhibitions in the town hall and also published the “Auer Museumsblätter”, which appeared as a supplement in the “Auer Tageblatt”.
At the instigation of the district cultural officer Friedrich Emil Krauss and through targeted activities by Dr. Sieber, the Aue Municipal Museum was officially opened in 1936. The savings bank had made a room in its former building (former Masonic lodge) available for a rental fee. The further history of the Auer Museum was very eventful. After the Second World War, it was looked after by the Cultural Association for some time. At the initiative of the Aue District Council, the facility was then opened to the public as a district museum in 1954. The museum facility now gave visitors an insight into the prehistory and early history of the region, the development of the town of Aue as an industrial center, the local mining industry, as well as Erzgebirge folk art and sacred art.
The facility was closed in the mid-1960s. The SED district leadership claimed the rooms on the upper floor of the museum building for its own training purposes. In this context, the town of Aue also lost its most valuable local work of art: the plaster carving. The other museum objects were stored on site. It was not until 1973 that a mining museum was opened on the Bergfreiheit on the initiative of Dr. Sieber and other local friends, on the occasion of Aue's 800th anniversary. The Aue companies of the "SDAG Wismut" had expanded and converted a former pithead building from the 17th century for this purpose and presented the reconstructed object to the town as an anniversary gift.
In 1990, the museum began to re-profile, which continued in the following years. The focus of the work and exhibition activities became the town's history in its regional and national significance, in which the local mining industry is a major part. One year later, the former "Ore Mining Heritage Site" was renamed "Aue Town Museum". In 1993, the rooms for presenting the town's history and special exhibitions were structurally improved. The structural redesign was completed in 2002 with the addition of a new entrance area. The collection was expanded in the following years within the scope of existing possibilities. In addition to the permanent exhibition on the town's and mining history, visitors are offered changing special exhibitions and interesting evening events.
