Richard Brandt Home Museum

The museum, which opened in 1963 in the center of Bissendorf, was donated to the municipality of Wedemark by its founder, the writer and local historian Richard Brandt (1899–1984). It is housed in two adjacent historic buildings. The Kavaliershaus, built in 1629, houses the prehistoric collection, an old kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, and an exhibition area featuring Karl Montag’s violin-making workshop. The Amtskrug, built in 1792, houses the local history collection. A special feature of the museum is its collection of memorabilia related to well-known artists and poets with ties to the area, such as the writer Hinrich Braasch, the painter and engraver Georg Heinrich Busse, the “Heide poet” Hermann Löns, and especially the poet Gottfried August Bürger (1747–1794), who married Molly Augusta Leonhart here in 1784.

The museum has been enriched by a considerable collection of rocks from the estate of a passionate paleontologist couple. Anyone interested in trilobites and ceratites will find a wealth of illustrative material on the upper floor of the Kavaliershaus.

The adjacent room is dedicated to Karl Montag, a painter and violin maker born in 1917, and his remarkable instruments. Montag, who took up violin making as a self-taught artisan at the age of 40, created violins whose rich tone rivaled that of century-old instruments by Stradivarius and the Cremona school.