In 2019, the Städel Museum received the generous private donation of the extensive legacy left behind by the artist Ottilie W. Roederstein. These exceptional archival holdings are now being cared for and processed at the museum.
In the exhibition “SELF. DETERMINED. The Painter Ottilie W. Roederstein” (20 July 2022 – 16 October 2022), selected documents and photographs from the Städel Museum’s Roederstein-Jughenn Archive offered initial insights into these important holdings.
It was by way of Roederstein’s partner Elisabeth H. Winterhalter (1856–1952) that the material entered the possession of Hermann Jughenn (1888–1967) of Hofheim, a longstanding friend of the two women. Starting in 1937, Jughenn worked on the legacy for more than twenty years, supplementing it with correspondence, photos of the works, memos and other material he collected in preparation for drawing up a biography of the artist and a catalogue of her oeuvre. After his death in 1967, his Roederstein archive remained in the possession of his familiy at his house in Hofheim. His catalogue raisonné was never published.
The holdings also comprise nearly 1,600 historical photographs of a wide range of different provenances as well as entire photo albums from the Roederstein-Winterhalter estate that were integrated into the material held by Jughenn and provide valuable visual testimonies to the period spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Kept in the library of the Städel Museum, the Roederstein-Jughenn Archive is a part of the Städel Archive and is available to scholars with a legitimate research interest.
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