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Faculty of Arts and HumanitiesInstitute of Archaeology

Catalogue of the Ancient Sculpture in the Castle Fasanerie (Adolphseck) close to Fulda

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The castle Fasanerie (Adolphseck) in Eichenzell close to Fulda houses aside from furniture, porcellain and paintings, a collection of Greek and Roman antiquities that were collected by Landgrave Philipp of Hesse (1896-1980). After it was housed in the Landgrafenmuseum in Kassel since 1935, which was destroyed in the war,  it was transferred to Castle Fasanerie in 1951 where it belongs to the administration of the Hessischen Hausstiftung.

The greek vases oft he collection have been published in two volumes of the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum and the 57 portraits were published in 1957 in a catalogue. The remaining 88 marble and limestone sculptures continue to lead a life in the shadows from a scientific perspective although the collection is one of the few that survived WWII without any loss and without being integrated into the holdings of a larger museum. The inventory contains a colossal cult statue’s head of the early 5th c. BC and attic funerary reliefs of Roman copies of works of the 4th c. BC and Hellenism. Fragments of Roman sarcophagi and historic reliefs as well as decorative objects of the Roman imperial age are also part of it as well as a series of architecture fragments that partly can be attributed to specific buildings in Rome.

The holdings of the most important private collection of Greek and Roman sculpture in Germany are made available to research for the first time by the photographic documentation and scientific research that was the aim of the project. The collection also becomes relevant in the research on the establishment of private collections and their specific forms of interest in antiquities in the early 20th c.

Supervision: Prof. Dr. Ralf von den Hoff

Funding: German Research Foundation (photographic campaign)

Bibliography (partly):

  • Gehrke, Peter: Pergami Symplegma des Kephisodot, in: Eikones. Festschrift Ernst Berger, 15. Beiheft Antike Kunst (1988) 232-234.
  • von Heintze, Helga: Die antiken Porträts in Schloß Fasanerie bei Fulda (1968).
  • Möbius, Hans: Die Antikensammlung im Landgrafen-Museum zu Kassel, in: Hessenland 48, 1937, 3-7, jetzt in: Möbius, Hans: Studia varia (1967) 146-148.
  • Neugebauer, Karl Anton: Antiken in deutschem Privatbesitz (1938) Nr. 3; 9; 20-22; 40.
  • Schefold, Karl: Meisterwerke Griechischer Kunst, Kunsthalle Basel (1960) Nr 218.
  • Tancke, Karin - Yfantidis, Konstantinos: Beobachtungen zur Rekonstruktion der Orest-Pylades-Gruppe in Schloß Fasanerie, in: Archäologischer Anzeiger 1989, 243-249.
  • Tancke, Karin: Die »Orest-Pylades-Gruppe« in Schloß Fasanerie bei Fulda, in: Kunst in Hessen und am Mittelrhein 30, 1990, 19-30.
  • Yfantidis, Konstantinos: Beobachtungen an zwei pergamenischen Köpfen in Schloß Fasanerie bei Fulda, in: Athener Mitteilungen 108, 1993, 226-238.