Bachstrasse 9 photographic documentation collection, 1955-2016

This collection consists of comprehensive photographic documentation of the material contents of a middle-class family home at Bachstrasse 9 in Versmold, a town in East Westphalia, northern Germany. The house was built in 1954-1955 and owned and occupied by Georg-Heinrich Heidemann (1925-1989) and Lieselotte Heidemann (née Baumhöfer, 1932-2012) and/or their two children, Stefan and Gabi, until November 2016. Stefan, the donor, conducted the photographic survey between February 2013 and November 2016, with supplementary object study texts added later.

The collection documents the material culture and social history of the household from approximately the 1930s to 2010s, with a particular focus on the mid-twentieth century. Objects pictured include furniture, decorative ceramics, glassware, silver and pewter, paintings and prints, books, toys, textiles, militaria, and everyday household items.

Each object or group of objects is documented through multiple photographs taken at the time of inventory, and in many cases through historical family photographs tracing the object's presence and use within the household from the 1930s onward. Selected objects are further accompanied by text documents, written by the donor, containing personal recollections and brief studies of their production history, cultural context, and significance within twentieth-century German material and design culture. The documentation captures both a view of the household as it existed at the time of inventory in 2013 and a historical view of how objects moved between rooms and households over several generations.

The collection is significant as a resource for the study of postwar German everyday culture, mid-century design, working- and middle-class domestic material life in the Wirtschaftswunder era, and the transmission of objects across generations. Among the objects documented are works by notable German mid-century designers and ceramicists, furniture in the "Gelsenkirchener Barock" style, and items reflecting the broader cultural and political environment of the 1930s-1940s as experienced in a provincial German household.