Walchensee Museum

The Franz Marc Museum is a private museum situated in an exceptionally beautiful location above Lake Kochel in Upper Bavaria. It was founded in 1986 to present Marc’s works in the landscape that inspired him. Since the opening of the new building in 2008 works by Franz Marc, artists associated with ‘Der Blaue Reiter’ (The Blue Rider), ‘Die Brücke’ (The Bridge) group and post-war abstraction can be seen on the museum’s three exhibition levels. The museum’s collection comprises some 2,000 works presented in temporary exhibitions. These include many important works of the German avant-garde by Paul Klee, Macke, Münter and Kandinsky, among others. Several hundred works by Franz Marc form the core of the collection. With paintings, drawings, watercolours, prints and sculptures, they represent the artist’s œuvre in a breadth and diversity that can hardly be found in any other museum.

Covering an area of almost 40 hectares, of which almost 30 hectares are built-up, the open air museum is home to more than 60 buildings. The architectural exhibits cover a broad thematic spectrum: from living and farming in the Alm (alpine pastureland) to early tourism, from the smallest building to living quarters for salt and ore miners, from a farm to a weekend house for townspeople. Along with the rural trades and preindustrial technology, attention is also focussed on industrialization in rural areas. One of the special features is the „House of Discovery“ for children – a small property redesigned for educational purposes, which shows everyday life in rural areas as it was approximately 100 years ago.