HYDERABAD: When I think of the most beautiful glassware around the world, Passau’s Glass Museum instantly flashes in my mind. I spent a considerable time there, admiring their splendid glass collection. Passau, a small, quiet and charming city in lower Bavaria - Germany, nestled away on the German/Austrian border is known as the City of the Three Rivers. Dating back to the Roman times, this small city attracts many tourists. The largest Glass Museum of Europe is housed here in Passau, located in the historic hotel - Wilder Mann, across the street to the Danube.
This museum houses the large private collection of Georg Höltl, a man who was in love with glass. He started collecting glass in the early 1960s, the first pieces he collected were Roman but then very soon he started to collect European Glass. The area of middle Europe known as Bohemia had been blessed with the natural resources and skilled artisans necessary for glassworks. In the Middle Ages Bohemian glass was much sought after.
In 1985, the Passau Glass Museum was opened by Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon. Within two years, Georg Höltl had the four-building complex in the old town, one of which was the traditional “Hotel Wilder Mann”, lovingly renovated with exemplary preservation of the historical building fabric, creating an imposing home for the Bohemian glassware. The museum starts on the top floor with the older pieces of glass, treasures in different styles and techniques in glass working or composition. The several floors in the museum move from the earliest works into more modern times, with overwhelming beauty and cultural treasures that the museum holds. Once the museum had been flooded up to the first floor and many pieces of the collection had been lost.
With more than 30.000 pieces it is the biggest museum of its kind worldwide, detailing the change in glassware through the ages. The glass was produced in a region that is now covered by southeast Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and southwestern Poland. The last 30 years and especially after the fall of the iron curtain, there was a lot of scientific work done on the archives of the old glass huts. Today they have very detailed information on the glass huts, designers and artists.
The sheer volume and artistry of the glass overwhelmed me. Of the different epochs of glass the Bohemian and Silesian Glass were the most important. Never before in the history of glass of thousands of years were there such high skills of refinement, designs, great varieties of ideas, splendour of colours, techniques of handicraft and glassworks as at the Bohemian and Silesian Glass, especially in the 19th century. In the Glass Museum Passau this epoch as a very advanced civilization in Europe is documented and displayed in a representative way.
30, 000 glasses of art on 5 floors in 40 rooms and 600 glass cases give a comprehensive view of the ‘European Glass” from 1650 until 1950, from the Baroque, Rococo, Empire, Biedermeier,
Historism, Art Nouveau, Art Deco until Modern Art. The huge volume of glassware allows detailed insights into the production of individual glass-making huts and their development, from their emergence to their decline.
Wilder Mann Hotel’s historical buildings date back to the gothic and baroque periods (13th century). The historical hotel has since played host to well-known names from the worlds of politics, business and culture: but none to match the attractive charm of a celebrity guest like Sisi, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, wife of Emperor Franz Joseph. What impressed me was the romantic element of Sisi and her stay in the hotel on three occasions; and the guide’s stories of Sisi’s beauty and her diet secrets. Born into Bavarian royalty, married at sixteen, she was noted for her beauty and vanity, her long hair touched her knees and she went to great lengths to maintain her long tresses and slim figure. As I listened to these stories of Sisi, I kept looking at the most precious glass ware. Unlike in most of the museums, there are no descriptions in English (accompanying the exhibits), but the whole experience just left me wondering in a sea of glass. I imagined my own stories there behind each glass. For me it was like looking at some exceptionally beautiful flowers in a garden, not bothering about their botanical names or seed dispersal or grafting. To appreciate beauty does one need any technical details?
(The author is a documentary filmmaker and travel writer; blogs at
www.vijayaprataptravelandbeyond.com)