Bernd Joa is a passionate collector. However, it has had a clearly defined area for almost 60 years: It collects everything that has a connection to the town of Wasserburg. “Either the exhibit was created here, or it represents Wasserburg,” he explains his concept before starting the tour. The collection is housed in a very attractive ambience: in the listed walls of the former Heiliggeist-Spital at the Brucktor with a view of the red bridge over the Inn.
At first only prints
In the beginning, Joa concentrated on printmaking, soon followed by drawings, watercolours, and oil paintings. Tin, silver, ceramics, clocks, documents, seals, snuffboxes, coins and much more followed. There are now 2,500 objects, the oldest piece dates from 1600, all original moated castles, of course. But what is really worth visiting the collection are the painted, drawn, and printed cityscapes that Joa has put together. Many well-known artists are among them, others have long been forgotten. He estimates that there must be 500 pictures, works that tell of how much the unique location and, above all, the view over the Inn to the old town has fascinated artists for centuries. Also, by the way, Alexej von Jawlensky, who painted in the city in 1906 and 1907. “But I can’t afford it,” says Joa.
Max A. Stremel (1859-1928), one of the most important German representatives of Pointillism, painted the oil painting “View of Wasserburg” around 1920.
(Photo: Karl Aß / Collection Bernd Joa)
It’s fun to stroll through the collection with him. You should bring enough time with you, after all there are four floors to be hiked up. The ground floor with the household items can be managed relatively quickly: pewter mugs and plates, the oldest from 1617, all stamped on the back. Ceramics, baking moulds, glazed and unglazed, and a real rarity: Wasserburg faience. Research into their tradition is only just beginning, so far most experts have been of the opinion that faience in the foothills of the Alps can only be found in Dießen, Salzburg and Gmunden. But in the meantime, so many secured objects have turned up that there is no longer any doubt as to their authenticity, says Joa.
As the 79-year-old climbs the creaking stairs to the first floor, he tells how, after two years of studying theology in Freising, he switched to Munich University in 1965, primarily to escape the seminary. “It didn’t suit me,” he says curtly. This year his instinct to collect awoke – probably the native of Wasserburg missed his hometown a lot. He became a regular customer in the Schwabing antiquarian bookshops and often spent the last of his money on a graphic. When he took up his position as a pastor in Edling (Rosenheim district) in 1980 after several stations, the vicarage and school house offered him enough space for his rapidly growing collection. When he retired in 2007, he donated his collection, “then only 1,400 objects,” to the city. But because he continued to collect, the former caretaker’s apartment in the town hall, where the collection was presented, soon became too small. In 2015 the exhibits moved again, this time to the Brucktor complex.
Of course, Bernd Joa also collects contemporaries, here the picture “An der Wasserburger Schiffsanlegestelle” (2012) by Gerhard Prokop, who was born in Rosenheim and was born in 1951. Hamburg, Rome, Prague, Vienna, Paris, Cairo found. And of course also in Wasserburg.
(Photo: Karl Aß / Collection Bernd Joa)
The building is wonderfully winding. Joa leads the way to the “Wasserburger Saal”. In the past, 25 sick men shared the only surviving sink and the toilet in the corridor. The pastor tightened his own criteria for this state room: “Anyone who is exhibited here must have lived in Wasserburg.” Otto Geigenberger, for example, who was born here in 1881 and is famous for his numerous views of the city, not just of Wasserburg. The Nazis couldn’t quite agree on his work. Some works were considered “degenerate”, while others were reproduced and reprinted again and again in “Westermanns Monatshefte”. In 1943/44 he was then neither allowed to paint nor to exhibit, exactly the time when the gloomy “Moated Castle in the Snow” was created. “He paid for it with groceries,” Joa believes.
Every picture has a story
A work by Ludwig Weninger hangs not far away. The Nazis consistently disliked his art. Born in Gunzenhausen in 1904, he moved to Wasserburg in the 1930s and often painted the town and its surroundings, albeit in the New Objectivity style. In the very last days of the war, an American soldier shot him while trying to escape in Franconia. His artistic legacy was discovered decades later in a Wasserburg granary.
Undisputed among the Nazis was Ernst Liebermann (1869 – 1960), a representational painter, whom Joa did not present in the hall but on the floor above without comment. In 1944 Hitler had him put on the God-gifted list, he was represented several times at the Great German Art Exhibitions in the Haus der Kunst.
The former pastor has a story behind every picture. Whether to Carl Staudt, who only spent the winters in Wasserburg, or to Josef Pilartz, a man from Cologne who was swept away to the Inn during the First World War, or to Hans Ganser (1897 – 1970), once a well-known tin founder, glazier, painter and restorer, his house has been the domicile of the Wasserburger Kunstverein AK 68 since 1975. Its members, such as Willi Reichert, are also represented in the hall.
Otto Geigenberger (1881 – 1946), here his oil painting “An der Wasserburger Innfront” (1926), painted countless city views, not just those of his hometown.
(Photo: Karl Aß / Collection Bernd Joa)
Other contemporaries can be found one floor up. Large numbers of copper engravings, etchings and lithographs also hang there. Joa often owns not only the original, but also various prints. Knows about the different signatures on sheets that appear identical. Explains the artistic development of Ludwig Weninger using four city views. Then stops in front of one of his favorite pictures: the “Parish Church with Two Convent Women” by Wolf Röhricht (1886 – 1953). Not a single proportion is right here, nothing is correct. “But it’s just Wasserburg”.
City maps and holy water font
Christian art has moved in at the top, terracotta figures of saints that Joa restores himself if necessary. Holy water cauldrons, models for votive offerings, collection boxes or a cupboard for storing the “Holy Oils”. And in the last room city maps, the oldest print dates back to 1815.
Yeah, still collecting. Every year at the last council meeting before Christmas, he hands over the treasures he has bought during the year to the city, sometimes 80 to 100 objects. He doesn’t think about quitting. Why should he – he shakes his head. “I enjoy it and I don’t have any relatives. What else should I do?”
Moated castle from five centuries. collection in the Brucktor, Bruckgasse 2, 83512 Wasserburg a. Inn. Viewing only after registration: Bernd Joa, phone 08071 922960, Email: joa.bernd(@)freenet.de