Coins formerly owned by Otto Rubensohn now in Münster
After 60 years, artefacts from the collection of Otto Rubensohn have been reunited. In 2026, the Archaeological Museum of the University of Münster was able to acquire a set of 66 coins that had formerly belonged to the German-Jewish archaeologist Otto Rubensohn (1867–1964).
In 1939, he had just managed to leave Germany, emigrate to Switzerland and take a large part of his collection with him. Thanks to the efforts of one of his former students from his time in Berlin, who later became a friend (Ernst Hellmut Vits, then chairman of the Friends of Münster University), Rubensohn’s collection of ancient artefacts had found its way to Münster in the 1960s. It forms the original stock of the Archaeological Museum, which had to be rebuilt after the war.
It was not previously known that Rubensohn had also collected coins. These coins have only just been rediscovered and were put up for auction by his heirs in 2024. A colleague from the Humboldt-Universtity in Berlin "saved" the small collection from being dispersed. Via a roundabout route through Berlin, the coins found their way to Münster and have now been reunited with the bulk of Rubensohn’s collection.
Our work on the coins has already revealed unexpected links between Rubensohn and the numismatic world: as part of a joint class run by the University of Münster and Humboldt University of Berlin, we are now cataloguing these coins with students and preparing a studio exhibition, which will be on display from 2027, first in Münster and then in Berlin.
