The Feuerbach House

The artist became famous primarily through his large-format paintings of antiquity and mythology in muted colours. The association, “Feuerbachhaus Speyer e.V.” which was founded in 1971, succeeded in rescuing the house when it was about to be razed in order to create a memorial to the Feuerbach family. The painter’s grandfather, Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach, was a significant legal scholar, and his father, Johann Anselm Feuerbach was a classical scholar and archaeologist.

The archaeologist’s family lived for ten years in the modest house which had been built in 1800. The city acquired the property with its big garden alongside the old city wall in 1912 in order to use if culturally. World War I and economic conditions afterwards did not allow such intentions to be realised; even in the commemorative years 1929/30, all that happened was a commemorative plaque installed alongside the door of the house. The association, “Feuerbachhaus Speyer e.V.” finally restored the house with support from citizens, handicraft firms, companies, the city of Speyer and the Rhineland-Palatinate.

The three upstairs rooms display original paintings and drawings, autographs, documents and books. The ground floor is set up as a “site for civic encounters” with a restaurant and several meeting, exhibition and conference rooms. The painter’s life’s work is shown in a documentary in which the most important works and artistic goals are brought to life in large-format photographic reproductions and sketches.