EN
Up to the WW II Nysa was the oldest and largest museum centre in the regency of Opole. The first museum established in the town was the Museum of Art and Antiquities (Kunst- und Altertumsmuseum), an agency of the Society of Art and Antiquities in Nysa (Kunst- und Altertumsverein in Neisse), housed in a Baroque palace - the former House of the Commander of the Nysa garrison (Alte Kommandantur). The range of the museum's activity encompassed the past of the duchy of the Nysa, administered by the bishops of Wroclaw. Among the regional museums of Lower and Upper Silesia his particular institution was distinguished by its rank and a total of about 33 000 monuments. In about 1900 Nysa witnessed the establishment of another centre - the Ethnological Museum of the Holy Cross Mission House in Górna Wies (Ethnologisches Museum des Missionshauses 'Heiligkreuz' der Steyler Missionare In Oberneuland bei Neisse). The expositions featured ethnographic monuments from those countries where the Verbists conducted their missions, i. e. China, Japan, New Guinea, Java, Flores and Bali, and in Africa - Togo, the Cameroon and Namibia. The next mission museum was opened by the Franciscans in about 1925 in their private secondary school (Juvenat der Franziskaner). During the early 1930s, Max Burdig, a war invalid, created in the hamlet of Kaplica (Kapellenberg near Nysa) a private Museum of Substitutional Currency (Notgeldmuseum), the only of its sort in the world. In 1935, its resources totalled 20 500 museum units. The Joseph von Eichendorff German Museum (Deutsches Eichendorff-Museum) created in 1935 by the Deutsche Eichendorff-Stiftung was of a totally different nature. It was housed in the building in which the poet spent the last months of his life and in which he died in 1857. Apart from Eichendorff souvenirs the museum featured material relating to other men of letters from Nysa, such as Friedrich von Sallet, August Daniel von Binzer, Moritz Graf Strachwitz and Hermann Kunibert Neumann. The last museum to be opened in Nysa prior to 1939 was the Garrison Museum (Standortmuseum), located in the barracks of the local sapper battalion.