Permanent Display 49. The Collection of Mechanical Musical Automata of Ivan Gerersdorfer
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An impassioned life
Ivan Gerersdorfer (1927-1993), a Zagreb man of the old style, well-known for the white Lancia he drove, was a top clockmaker, an initiator of exhibitions, an impassioned collector and restorer of musical automata, which he wrote about in short accounts in the periodical press. His mother, Vera Meid, (1889-1955) was an opera singer, and his father Ivo (1897-1953) had a hat factory.
Ivan Gerersdorfer was a passionate collector of musical automata, wanting to make his collection show the development of the mechanical automatization of music.
His unique collection, although it shows items of varied provenance, is a part of the Zagreb cultural milieu and documents the level of the way of life of Zagreb and the culture of its inhabitants.
Donation
In 1977 Gerersdorfer gave his collection of mechanical musical automata to the city of Zagreb. In 1994 the city authorities decided to confide it to the Zagreb City Museum. In 1949, on the basis of the Cultural Monuments and Natural Rarities Protection Law, a protection order was placed on it, and in autumn 1966 the collection was opened to the public for the first time.
Slavko Šterk
Online collection