On the eve of World War 1 – in May 1914 – the first and last "Internationale Ausstellung für Buchgewerbe und Graphik" opened its doors in Leipzig. Spread out over 400,000 m2, the show surprised with its international vision: 22 nations presented their wares and attracted over 2.3 million visitors to the Leipzig Fair. Alongside national pavilions, trade exhibitions and an amusement park, the “Hall of Culture” provided cultural and historical insights into the writing traditions of far-off lands. The Chinese Scholars’ House assumed a special role in this hall: as a cultural import from China, the wooden house was an example of the European enthusiasm for Asian culture, which had already infected a large number of people in the arts in the nineteenth century.

The Chinese Scholars’ House comprises three rooms ─ a writing room, a music room, and a living room. This reconstruction of one such traditional house has been fitted out with numerous items from the world of traditional Chinese scholarship. Whether through a hookah, a writing implement or picture scroll, a cricket cage or an ornamental tile: the house tells of how scholars worked and proved a great attraction at the international exhibition. It is a testimony to the inquisitiveness and vibrancy of international cultural transfer in the early twentieth century. Over 100 years later, the museum is presenting a selection of the objects that have survived all of a century and two world wars in its depot.

Photo: Klaus D. Sonntag

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Chinese stamp in the form of a stele with a dragon and written characters, China, pre-1914 On display in the permanent exhibition “Signs – Books – Networks” in the German National Library's German Museum of Books and Writing.

Pagination

: Ancient Chinese brush holder …

: Hu, Zhengyan: Shi zhu zhai shu hua pu. …

An extensive collection of objects from the scholar's house has survived more than 100 years and two world wars in the depot of the German National Library’s German Museum of Books and Writing. The exhibition “Cricket's Cage and Hookah: the Chinese Scholar’s House – Cultural Export from c. 1900” displays a selection of these, thus illustrating the cultural curiosity and vitality of international cultural transfer at the beginning of the 20th century. However, the hope expressed at that time by the organisers that the world exhibition would contribute to peaceful competition between the nations, that “type and printer’s ink [would rule the world] rather than powder and lead”, was abruptly shattered by the outbreak of war in summer 1914.

With the kind support of the Confucius Institute and the University of Leipzig, in cooperation with the University Library, the Museum of the Printing Arts and the GRASSI Museum of Ethnology.