Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz

Chemnitz's main art museum, with the strongest collection of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff's work anywhere

The museum occupies a 1909 Jugendstil building on Theaterplatz, one of the more pleasant squares in the city. Beyond the Schmidt-Rottluff holdings, the collection covers German Expressionism broadly — Kirchner, Heckel, and Nolde are all represented — alongside older Saxon and German painting. The modern and contemporary wings extend the story into the postwar period.

Theaterplatz itself is worth pausing on: the opera house, the Petrikirche, and the museum together form the city's most coherent architectural ensemble. Entry to the permanent collection is reasonably priced, and the museum café is a decent place for a break.

things to do museum
A story
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff was born in Rottluff, now a suburb of Chemnitz, in 1884. He went on to co-found the Expressionist group Die Brücke and became one of the defining voices of German modernism. The Kunstsammlungen holds the largest collection of his work in the world — a local-boy-made-good story that gives the museum a genuine focus rather than the diffuse quality of many regional collections.