„Ich sammle nicht für mich alleine.“

Wolfgang Haney und seine Privatsammlung zum Antisemitismus

Abstract

In almost 30 years, Wolfgang Haney (1924-2017) structured a private collection of about 15.000 objects, focusing primarily on the history of anti-Semitism in Germany and Europe, the history of Nazi persecution and the Holocaust, the commemorative culture, as well as right-wing radicalism after 1945. The collection unites various groups of objects from the mid-19th century to the present and is therefore characterized by its heterogeneity, which at the same time reflects Haney’s broad collecting interests. Since Wolfgang Haney and his family were excluded and persecuted by the National Socialists between 1933 and 1945, he felt constrained to use his collection to educate people about anti-Semitism and National Socialism. For this reason, he made his collection available for national as well as international research and exhibition projects, so that it gained a great level of publicity. The Sammlung Haney, which the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin acquired in 2019, includes not only the objects but also numerous correspondences, loan agreements, invoices, and interviews, that allow for an analysis of the collection’s history with its origin, growth, structure, and publicity. Since there has yet been no systematic research on a collector like Wolfgang Haney, the results also form a basis of comparison for other private collections of similar nature.

Keywords: Wolfgang Haney; private collection; history of collection; anti-Semitism; National Socialism