Our collection areas

Managing, researching, collecting, documenting, preserving, mediating, exhibiting and communicating – these are the core tasks of a museum. Museums and their collections and archives therefore have an important social function as a historical memory. Other tasks include the conservation of archive material and the restoration of damaged items, the cataloguing of collections, advising users, the presentation of archive and collection material for use by interested parties on the museum’s premises and the acquisition of additional items.

The archives of the Fritz Reuter Literature Museum contain five collections:

Fritz Reuter documents

The manuscript archive forms the centrepiece of the museum’s collections. It mainly comprises manuscripts and manuscript pieces by Fritz Reuter, smaller handwritten verse pieces and prose works as well as letters by, and to, Reuter, but also manuscripts by relatives, acquaintances and contemporaries.

Written material by Low German authors

Manuscripts and estates of other Low German authors are preserved here, in particular those of Rudolf Tarnow, Wilhelm Zierow and Max Gerhardt.

Pictures

Collection of Reuter portraits, autograph paintings and drawings by Reuter as well as illustrations for the works of Fritz Reuter, but also pictorial documents on how Reuter was received and the history of Stavenhagen and its surroundings.

Three-dimensional

The focus is on the collection of artefacts belonging to Fritz Reuter, his family, friends and acquaintances. Other themes include figurative works on how Reuter was received and the history of Stavenhagen.

Historical city archive

Collection of documents on the history of Stavenhagen. The centrepiece of the archive is the so-called Altregistratur, in which the history of the town from around 1775 to 1933/34 is largely documented by documents, minutes and other municipal books.