In 1886 the Dutchman opened a museum of historic musical instruments in Leipzig, but he sold the collection to the paper merchant Wilhelm Heyer in 1905. The "Wilhelm Heyer Museum of Music History" opened in 1913, containing De Wit's collection alongside that of the
Florentine Baron Alessandro Kraus and
keyboard instruments from the
Prussian manufacturer Ibach. The collection was bought by the University of Leipzig in 1926, paid for partly by the
State of Saxony and partly by the publisher
C.F. Peters, and was opened in the New Grassi Museum in 1929. Parts of the collection were removed for safekeeping during
World War II, but a large number of the remaining items were destroyed during a
bomb raid on the building in 1943, including the Ibach pianos, the archive and the library. After the war it transpired that the items which had been removed were also significantly damaged or lost, owing to improper storage or theft. Starting in the 1950s, the museum was gradually rebuilt and reopened to the public. The collection was expanded anew over the following decades, through purchases and donations. All or part of the De Wit, Heyer, Kraus and Ibach collections still survive. The museum is a member of the
Konferenz Nationaler Kultureinrichtungen, a union of more than twenty cultural institutions in the
former East Germany. ==Exhibition==