As of: February 1, 2024, 9:29 a.m
By: Charlotte Borst
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Where should the organs go? asks museum director Alois Piterna.
(Archive image) © Dieter michalek
The organ museum in Unterschleißheim will be evacuated this Thursday.
But the operator is hoping for a last-minute rescue: He asks the owner for an extension of the deadline.
Unterschleißheim – Everything has to go today.
Otherwise there is a risk of eviction.
But where should the last 40 to 50 instruments from the former organ museum go?
Alois Piterna is hoping for a last-minute rescue.
The extinct IAZ shopping center resembles a haunted house.
The shops have been cleared out, the entrance doors locked.
The last keyboards, synthesizers and electronic organs are located in a 280 square meter shop on the first floor, where the museum was located.
The bailiff will come a second time.
The instruments are taken to a warehouse at the district court and auctioned off after a month.
“But that wouldn’t be of any use,” says 70-year-old Piterna, they wouldn’t find any buyers and would “end up in bulky waste.”
He has been clearing the area for months.
The owner has already extended the eviction deadline
He has stored some of the 450 collection items in his house near Markt Schwaben.
He was able to store one or two instruments with organist friends, and he sold or gave away another 40 defective pieces through advertisements that served as spare parts storage.
There was already a threat of eviction in the fall.
Piterna canceled it at the last minute - which cost him around 1000 euros.
The owner of the building on Rathausplatz, the Rock Capital Group, had extended the eviction deadline until January 31st.
“I only need another week or two,” the organist and former director of the Unterschleißheim music school has a commercial space in mind, 600 meters as the crow flies from the IAZ.
“I might be able to rent it” for the last 40 to 50 instruments.
“It would only take a certain amount of goodwill to help me,” says Piterna.
He wrote to Rock Capital managing director Christian Lealahabumrung again and asked for the second extension of the deadline: He thinks that should be possible, since he pays 700 euros in rent and the IAZ won't be demolished until 2026 anyway.
Collection costs 660,000 euros
Even the Free State couldn't help him with rooms.
Pieterna is sad about the development, but doesn't blame anyone.
Not Rock Cpaital - "I am grateful for the six and a half years in bright, friendly rooms" - not the Free State or the city council, which decided with a narrow majority to return the organ museum from the city's responsibility to Piterna's private care: "A democratic decision", he says.
Piterna knows it sounds a little crazy how much energy he puts into the collection.
He invested 660,000 euros to build it.
The move and restart would cost him 20,000 euros.
It's not about the money for him.
He feels responsible, especially for the organs that other musicians entrusted to him after he got to know them at concerts and tours.
“Older people who gave me their instrument in the hope that it would outlive them because they knew their children had no interest in it.” He is encouraged by the fact that the museum's circle of friends has over 1,000 supporters.
Further news from Unterschleißheim and the Munich district can be found here.