In the context of this project, the Gemäldegalerie (Old Masters Gallery) is digitising 35 artworks from the painting collection of the Streitsche Stiftung, which have been preserved as museum loans since the postwar period. The most important pieces in the collection are on view in the permanent exhibition. This project is the first to make all the works in the Streitsche Stiftung accessible to the public.
The Streitsche Stiftung is a foundation traced back to Sigismund Streit (1687–1775), a former secondary school student at the Berlinisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster (founded in 1574). Following his apprenticeship to become a merchant, Streit emigrated to Venice in 1709, where he established himself as a successful businessman. However, his ties to his old school remained strong. Streit, who was childless, set up the first foundation for the gymnasium in 1752. In addition to substantial financial resources for expanding the school and supporting the teaching staff, he sent books from his library to Berlin as early as 1757. In 1758, he sent the first paintings, including a portrait of himself by Jacopo Amigoni.
From his adopted home in Venice, the prosperous businessman also commissioned several programmatic image cycles, intended to bring the students at the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in distant Berlin closer to Streit’s educational ideals and to the Republic of Venice that he so admired. These works comprised four significant Venetian vedutas by Canaletto, a six-part series of paintings depicting Venetian festivals, and Giuseppe Nogari’s four-part series on education and schooling. The paintings enhanced the gymnasium’s interior décor.
In addition to Sigismund Streit’s gifts of paintings, today’s Streitsche Stiftung Collection includes other images that entered the foundation during the 19th and 20th centuries. Among these are portraits of former directors of the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster.
After the near destruction of the gymnasium building during the Second World War and the subsequent division of the city, the paintings resurfaced at the end of the1940s in West Berlin territory and have been preserved as official loans to the Gemäldegalerie since 1964.
During this digitisation project, high-resolution photographs are being taken of the front and back of all the paintings, which will subsequently be published in the online collection of the Gemäldegalerie ‒ Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, alongside specific details for each work and scholarly object texts. The high-resolution digitisation of the paintings provides a valuable resource for current and future research on art and institutional history. It contributes to the extensive, publicly accessible documentation about works of art preserved at the Gemäldegalerie.
Objectives and outcome: Digitisation of the Streitsche Stiftung loans at the Gemäldegalerie with high-resolution photographs showing the fronts and backs of paintings; verification of all specific details known about the objects; writing texts about the works that include the state of research; creating a general record for each of the objects in the museum documentation system, as well as for online publication
Project organisation: Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Project directors: Anina Gröger (research associate at the Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), Dagmar Hirschfelder (director)
Project staff: Katrin Hammer (Gemäldegalerie photographer), Maria Stein (Gemäldegalerie photo archivist), Agnes Zsiros and Laurence Brugger (collection management)
Duration: 2025–26
Funding: Streitsche Stiftung