Icon Museum Frankfurt

Jörgen Schmidt-Voigt, a heart specialist from Frankfurt, had a special passion: he collected icons—religious images and depictions of saints, which are particularly characteristic of Orthodox Christianity. In 1988, he ultimately donated a total of 800 wooden and metal icons, as well as liturgical objects, to the city of Frankfurt, including pieces from Russia, Greece, Egypt, Syria, and Ethiopia. Since then, they have been on display at this branch of the Museum of Applied Arts: in the former refectory of a Baroque monastery on the Main River, which had been run by the Teutonic Order; architect Oswald Mathias Ungers gave the historic building an exciting redesign. Over the past decades, the original collection has grown to more than 1,000 exhibits today—including items on loan from institutions such as the Museum of Byzantine Art in Berlin. A truly unique feature of the exhibition: In its Ethiopia Cabinet, the museum is the only one in Germany to showcase the sacred art of Ethiopian Christians.