Museum Folkwang

Listen for a moment before you go inside. The traffic of Essen fades behind you. The light changes as well. It turns soft and even, filtered through broad panels of pale, milky glass. Underfoot, the stone is smooth and cool. The building gives no grand announcement. It offers a calm, open threshold, and then it asks you to slow down. Welcome to Museum Folkwang, one of the great homes of modern art in Germany.

Start with the name, because it is stranger than it sounds. Folkwang comes from Norse mythology. In the old stories, Fólkvangr is the field or hall of the goddess Freyja, a place where she gathers the souls of the dead. The museum's founder chose that name with purpose. He wanted a hall where people could gather around art. He did not want a dusty treasury. He wanted a meeting place.

That founder was Karl Ernst Osthaus, a wealthy young collector. Here is the first surprise. The Folkwang did not begin in Essen at all. Osthaus opened it in 1902 in Hagen, a smaller industrial town to the south. For its interiors, he worked with the Belgian designer Henry van de Velde, a leading figure of Art Nouveau, the flowing, plant-inspired style of that era. Osthaus believed that art belonged inside ordinary working life, even in the smoky heart of German industry.

Osthaus collected with real nerve. At a time when many German museums still looked away, he bought works by painters who were seen as difficult or new. He bought French artists like Gauguin and Cézanne. He supported young German painters too. Then, in 1921, Osthaus died. His heirs sold the collection. The city of Essen bought it and joined it with its own art museum. From 1922, the Folkwang had a new home here, in the heart of the Ruhr.

It is worth pausing on that choice. Essen was a city of coal and steel. It was the home of the Krupp industrial dynasty. Yet in the 1920s, this museum became one of the most admired modern collections anywhere. Visitors came to see French painting next to German Expressionism. Expressionism was a movement of bold colour and raw emotion. Its artists painted feeling, not just appearance. For a few short years, the Folkwang stood at the front line of taste.

Those years did not last. In 1937, the Nazi regime began its campaign against what it called degenerate art. That was the official label for modern work that the regime rejected. Officials stripped German museums of their modern collections. The Folkwang suffered one of the heaviest losses of all. Well over a thousand works were taken from this museum. Many were sold abroad. Some were destroyed. A large part of the collection that Osthaus built simply disappeared from Essen.

So the walls around you show a second effort, not a first. After the war, the museum slowly rebuilt its holdings. Curators bought back some works. Collectors and foundations helped with others. A new museum building opened at the end of the 1950s. Its low, clear, modernist design still forms part of the site today. Look carefully as you move through the rooms. You can sometimes feel the join between the older building and the newer one.

The newer part is the work of the British architect David Chipperfield. It opened in 2010. That was the year the Ruhr region served as European Capital of Culture, a title the European Union gives to one or two cities each year. The Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation funded the new building. There is a quiet irony in that. The fortune of the steel family now pays for galleries of light and calm.

Chipperfield did not build one huge hall. Instead, he made a group of connected volumes around inner courtyards and gardens. As you walk, you will often see green space or open sky through tall glass. This rhythm matters. You step from a gallery into daylight, and your eyes rest. Then you step into the next room ready to look again. The design follows the old idea of the Folkwang itself — a gathering place with room to breathe.

Now to the art. The collection is strong in nineteenth and twentieth century painting. You may meet works by Caspar David Friedrich, the German Romantic painter of misty landscapes. French painting is well represented, with names like Monet, Cézanne, and Matisse. Look for Gauguin's Barbarian Tales, a dreamlike scene from his years in the South Pacific. And watch for Vincent van Gogh's portrait of Armand Roulin, a young man painted in strong, direct colour.

Here is a second surprise, one that many visitors miss. The Folkwang is not only about paintings. It holds one of the most important museum collections of photography in Germany. It is also home to the German Poster Museum, with a very large archive of printed posters. Exhibitions change, so the rooms you see today may differ from the ones a friend saw last year. It is worth checking what is showing before you plan your route.

The Folkwang name also travelled far beyond these walls. In Essen, it is attached to a famous university of the arts. The dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch trained at the Folkwang school here. She later changed modern dance across the world. The name that Osthaus took from an old myth still stands for a simple belief. Art, music, dance, and design all belong together, and all belong in everyday life.

Before you leave, find a spot near one of the courtyards. Notice how the glass softens the outside world. Notice the quiet. Somewhere in these rooms are works that survived seizure, sale, and war. Others came back after long journeys. As you walk out into the streets of Essen, remember the field of Freyja. This museum still tries to be what its founder wanted — a place where people gather, look, and stay a little longer than they planned.