Information
The East Frisian County Museum in Emden is owned jointly by the City of Emden and the Society for Fine Arts and Patriotic Antiquities (Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst und vaterländische Altertümer). The Society was founded in 1820 and initially focused on collecting paintings, drawings, and prints from private collections in the region. Many of the painters, stained-glass artists, architects, and printmakers among the sixteenth-century wave of migration from the Northern and Southern Netherlands worked in Emden.
Numerous artworks from the collections were lost during the Second World War. Noteworthy items to have survived include the town hall paintings, which feature a series of windowpanes depicting justice by the Amsterdam stained-glass artist Johan Janssen and two paintings by Johan Wraghe from Antwerp.
Some of the Dutch paintings and prints from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries in the museum’s holdings are repetitions and imitations, but several celebrated masters are also represented, such as Ludolf Backhuysen, with a series of paintings and a drawing. Among the seventeenth-century artists are Bartholomeus Assteyn, Maerten Boelema de Stomme, Hans II and Hans III van Coninxloo, Abraham van Cuylenborch, Isaack Luttichuys, Jacobus Sibrandi Mancadan, Abraham Susenier, Petrus Staverenus, Adriaen van de Venne, Jacomo Victors, Wigerus Vitringa, and Jan Vonck.
The portrait collection comprises pieces from the late sixteenth century onward, including a self-portrait by Jan Abel Wassenberg and paintings by East Frisian artists who worked across borders.
The armory, established in the second half of the nineteenth century, has a rich array of Dutch weaponry, including a large collection of wheel-lock pistols. The early holdings of the map collection are of Dutch origin. The silver collection comprises objects by Dutch masters, primarily from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Dr. Annette Kanzenbach, Research assistant (February 2026)