Regional Bocholt, North Rhine-Westphalia

Stadtmuseum Bocholt

City history museum in Bocholt, closed since 2022: the collection is in storage, and a new museum in the city center is being planned.

Temporarily closed

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Temporarily closed. The building on Osterstraße has been closed to visitors since April 2022; the collection is in storage, and the museum is being redeveloped and will move to a new cultural site in the city center. Guided tours of the Stadtwaldlager and the Stolpersteine continue to be offered.

About the museum

The first efforts toward a local heritage museum in Bocholt date back to the 1920s, driven by the Verein für Heimatpflege (local heritage association), founded in 1907; the early holdings were largely lost during the war. After 1945 the city initially planned an "art house" (Kunsthaus), before the wish for a city history museum prevailed from the 1960s onward. Archaeological finds, a private geological and paleontological collection and municipal art holdings formed the basis of the collection.

The museum found its home in 1988 with the purchase of the listed building at Osterstraße 66: a Reform-style building with largely preserved Art Deco interiors, one of the few buildings in the heavily war-damaged city center that still bear witness to the past. On May 15, 1992, the city of Bocholt and the Verein für Heimatpflege opened the city museum together. Besides city history, it displayed folk art and fine art, including copperplate engravings by Israhel van Meckenem and the estate (Nachlass) of the stage designer and poster painter Josef Fenneker.

In April 2022, the building was permanently closed to visitors because of fire safety defects. By May 2024 the entire collection had been moved to an interim depot and re-inventoried; since then the museum office has been working in the LernWerk. A joint cultural site with the city archive in the city center is planned as the future location. Until then, the team offers guided tours and smaller presentations.