Museum of East Asian Art

Around 1900, interest in East Asian art as a field of its own was growing in Germany. Adolf and Frieda Fischer, who worked in Berlin as private scholars of ethnography, decided in 1903 to devote their collecting entirely to it. An initial attempt to found a museum in Kiel in 1904 failed because of the city's finances.

The decisive push for Cologne came from Max Creutz, director of the Museum of Applied Arts, and the entrepreneur Arnold von Guilleaume, who set up a well-funded circle of patrons. In June 1909 the city council approved the contract with Fischer. Built as an extension to the Museum of Applied Arts on the Hansaring and designed by Franz Brantzky, the new museum opened on 25 October 1913. Just six months later Adolf Fischer died; his wife Frieda took over its direction and steered it through the First World War and the Weimar Republic.

From 1925 to 1933 Alfred Salmony served as deputy director and organised the first exhibition of Asian art in Cologne in 1926, before the National Socialists dismissed him from office in 1933. The collection of around 900 objects was rescued from destruction in April 1944 – the building itself was completely lost in the war, and the holdings remained without a permanent home for many years.

Alongside the permanent collection, the museum regularly presents changing special exhibitions on Chinese, Japanese and Korean art – from porcelain and calligraphy to woodblock prints and contemporary work. A support association founded in 1989 assists the museum both practically and financially.