Museum für Angewandte Kunst

The Museum für Angewandte Kunst stands in Gera, a city in Thüringen, housed in the Ferbersche Haus on Greizer Straße. This baroque residence from the 18th century was once home to merchants and industrialists, its portal dated 1760. The building’s name comes from Moritz Rudolf Ferber, a Gera patron who bought it in 1842 and whose heirs later remodelled the first floor in historicist style. The museum specialises in applied arts and is Thüringen’s only museum of its kind. Its permanent display focuses on 20th-century craftwork, photography, graphic design, furniture and domestic culture. A key highlight is the exhibition ‘Art déco and Functionalism’, which shows modernist ceramics, fashion, furniture and prints from between the world wars. Among the most prized pieces are Bauhaus ceramics by Otto Lindig and Theodor Bogler, works by Thilo Schoder and photographs by Aenne Biermann. Visitors find a sequence of period rooms arranged around an inner courtyard, with changing displays that add variety to the programme. The museum also stages the Aenne-Biermann Prize for contemporary German photography, selecting the jury, hosting the winners’ exhibition and publishing the accompanying catalogue.