The history of the City Museum
The city museum used to be a local collection and was a district museum until 1973. After 1973, the museum was called the "traditional ore mining centre". From 1990 onwords, it was rebranded to the Aue city museum.
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" (museum journal).
The city museum was officially opened in 1936. In the years that followed, the town museum frequently changed location and management. Since 1954, the museum has given visitors an insight into the prehistory and beginnings of Aue's industrial development into a major centre of the mining industry in the Erzgebirge.
In the mid-1960s, the rooms of the museum were used for training purposes by the leading socialist unity party of the German Democratic Republic, so the museum was closed. The exhibits were stored until 1973, when a mining museum was opened on the Bergfreiheit on the initiative of Dr Sieber. The occasion was the 800th anniversary of the town of Aue.
SDAG Wismut had extended and remodelled a former 17th century hat house for this purpose as an anniversary gift.
In 1990, the museum began to reorganise its profile, which was continued in the following years. The focus of the work and exhibition activities became the history of the town in its regional and supra-regional significance, in which the local mining industry plays an important role. The collection was expanded in the following years within the scope of the available possibilities. In addition to the exhibition, visitors are offered changing special exhibitions and interesting evening events.
