The inventory of E. F. Gollerbach. From the history of museumification of the Chinese Palace in Oranienbaum

Abstract

The museification of the former Oranienbaum residence of the Mecklenburg-Strelitskys, nationalized by the decision of the Northern Labor Commune in 1918, is one of the little-studied pages in Russian museology. One of the documentary evidences of this process is the “Brief Inventory of the Chinese Palace in Oranienbaum”, 1920, currently stored in the Archive of the State Hermitage Museum. The compiler of this document was a senior employee of the Department for the Protection, Accounting and Registration of Monuments of Art and Antiquity, Erich Fedorovich Gollerbach (1895–1942), sent at the end of July 1920 to inspect and register art collections concentrated in the only Oranienbaum Palace-museum operating at that time. The involvement of E. F. Gollerbach, an art critic, an enthusiastic bibliophile and collector, who later became the author of the first post-revolutionary guide to the sights of Tsarskoye (Detskoye) Selo, in the work on the accounting of art collections in the Chinese Palace is a little-known fact, probably had episodic significance in his biography. However, the property inventory compiled by him, even in its unfinished version, is of undoubted interest to researchers of the history of the formation of museum business in Oranienbaum. The works of art included in this list belonged to the historical collection of the Oranienbaum palaces, and the authenticity of this collection was preserved until the official accession of the Administration of the Oranienbaum Palaces-Museums to the Peterhof in October 1925. This study, based on the analysis of the inventory of E. F. Gollerbach and the comments left by him, examines the main methods of work of employees of the Department for the Protection of Accounting and Registration of Monuments of Art and Antiquity when they inventory nationalized private collections. In addition, on the basis of the same document, the problem of the possibility of identifying objects of the historical collection of the Oranienbaum palaces-museums in the funds of the State Museum-Reserve “Peterhof ” is actualized.

Keywords:

Oranienbaum, Peterhof, The Chinese Palace, museum, Gollerbach, inventory, historical collection