Old University (Marburg)

Old University

Old University of the East

Old University from the South

Old university, detail

Gargoyles

Dog figure

View around 1875 during the renovation of the former Dominican monastery

The Old University is a secular building of the Philipps University of Marburg in the neo-Gothic style. It was built in 1873–1879 (west wing / seminar and auditorium wing) and 1887–1891 (main wing) according to plans by the university architect Carl Schäfer . The building fits in almost seamlessly with the monastery church built from 1291 and integrated into the ensemble, later the university church, the sacristy of which was even taken over directly into the new building complex and for a while provided space for the university archive; the complex is now the seat of the Protestant theology department .

history

After the annexation of Kurhessen by Prussia in 1866, the Philipps University was gradually expanded. The construction of today's Old University , which can be seen as a high-quality example of a secular building in German neo-Gothic, was built during this period . The structure of the previous building, a Dominican monastery with a cloister and wing structures, was adopted in the sense of the old as a bearer of meaning in the architectural concept of Carl Schäfer. Its construction is inspired by the medieval image of the Upper Town of Marburg with the castle towering over everything as a "crown" and the shape of the Gothic Elisabeth Church with its slender towers and decorative colored glass windows. As with St. Elisabeth, white Wehrda sandstone was used as a building material. The keystones of the vaults bear the coats of arms of German university towns. A dog figure on the roof above the former lavatory in the north-west corner of the university building keeps the memory of the former owners alive, of the domini canes , the "masters' dogs", like the Dominicans (monks) - literally - because of their zeal for faith were designated: "Domini canes Evangelium latrantes per totum orbem" 'The Lord's dogs bark the gospel to the whole world'. In the building there is also a museum Universitätskarzer .

The auditorium has an organ and is 27 m long, 14 m wide and 8.50 m high, of considerable size. The interior of the years between 1893 and 1902 goes back to the Frankfurt architect Alexander Linnemann , whose painted wooden ceiling, a self-supporting structure, was preserved. His full-length paintings of the Hohenzollern Emperors Wilhelm I and Friedrich III. once flanked on the south wall of the room the picture of the university founder , Philip the Magnanimous . Three six-part windows with rich tracery and grisaille painting on antique glass let subdued daylight into the room. Professors' chairs made of oak with the carved coats of arms of German universities, wall paneling also made of oak, two imposing chandeliers, a richly decorated catheter and artistically studded and painted doors complete the room decorations. The highlight is the pictorial program brought in in 1903 by the history painter Johann Peter Theodor Janssen , which transforms the local and university history of Marburg into a Prussian-German educational history. Seven main pictures on the walls, a cycle of legends “Otto der Schütz” in the spandrels of the large windows, 13 medallions from important scholars from the local university and a medallion from Landgrave Wilhelm VI. , the re-founder of the university in 1653, impress the visitor. William VI. had moved the reformed Marburg University, which had evaded to Kassel in the Thirty Years War, back to the Lahn. Panels in the western cloister contain woodcuts and the names of professors who worked at the Philippina before 1653.

On June 17, 1934, then Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen gave the so-called Marburg speech (critical of the regime) in the auditorium of the University of Marburg , and on August 21, 1951, the doctor and writer Gottfried Benn gave his much-acclaimed lecture on “Problems of Poetry ".

A bust in the inner courtyard commemorates Professor Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), one of the most powerful Protestant theologians of the 20th century. His name stands for the overcoming of traditional forms of piety and an orthodox theology in order to stand up for a Christianity that corresponds to the essence of faith and the requirements of the present. The bust was donated by two Norwegian admirers on the 20th anniversary of Bultmann's death; The sculptor was the Norwegian Hugo Frank Wathne (1932–2017). The bronze bust of Baron Karl vom und zum Stein , placed in the stairway at the Lahntor, was given a place of honor in 1931 in the (upper) entrance area of the university in Reitgasse. The bust, moved to its current location around 1970, was a gift from the Prussian state government on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the death of the Nassau- born reformer and great son of the Hesse-Nassau province. After the “German Fratricidal War” in 1866, the Hessian Philippina became royal-Prussian and now also a state university for the Nassau part of this province (for students from Nassau, Göttingen was previously the state university, a choice that Goethe made in a letter to his “great friend” Karl Ludwig von Knebel of October 1817 commented as follows: "Nassau had no decent local anyway, Gießen and Marburg too close and so insignificant."). The sculptor Jakob / Jacob Hübel (then Bergnassau, born December 16, 1889 in Schmargendorf near Berlin, died after 1950 in Berlin?) Designed the bust of the baron, who was a friend of the Prussian minister of culture, Carl Heinrich Becker (1876–1933). The staircase is also adorned with an inscription in Latin that refers to the foundation of the university in 1527 and the completion of the (new lecture hall) building in 1879, as well as a commemorative plaque for the Russian polymath Michail Lomonossow (1711–1765), who 1736–1739 in Marburg studied with the philosopher Christian Wolff (1679–1754) and in 1740 married a woman from Marburg. Further up the hill, Landgrave Philip the Magnanimous greets from a wire cage; Peter Joseph Schöneseiffer (1846–1922) made the statue in 1901. At the foot of the Philip figure, a bronze plaque commemorates the Jewish scholar Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), who with his interpretations of Kant founded the so-called Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism , a movement in philosophy that characterized numerous young academics in the decades before the First World War at home and abroad to study in Marburg, for example Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945), who was later expelled from Germany , as well as the Spanish sociologist and cultural philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955) and the Russian poet and Nobel Prize winner Boris Pasternak (1890-1960).

The mill staircase on Pilgrimstein Street

On the retaining wall next to the mill staircase in the east, a plaque commemorates the mathematics professor, physicist and ingenious inventor Denis Papin (1647 – approx. 1712), a Huguenot who lived on Marburger Markt (no. 15) and, among other things, an early form on site who developed high pressure steam engine.

Prehistory of the Old University

The prehistory of the Old University can be traced back to the last years of the 13th century, when Landgrave Heinrich I (1244–1308) provided the Dominican Order of Preachers ( ordo fratrum praedicatorum ) with land for the construction of a monastery in the southeast corner of the city . The soaring choir of the church was completed around 1320, it was started as a basilica; but the building remained a torso. A flat nave from around 1420 with a side aisle behind thick columns completes the building asymmetrically to the west. The roof turret dates from the 18th century (the mendicant order of the Dominicans was not allowed to build representative church towers).

After the university moved into the monastery building in 1527, the church was initially not used and the inventory was sold. At times the church was used for funeral ceremonies for professors. After the flood of the Lahn in 1552, the useless building was to be torn down; stones were needed to rebuild the two middle arches of the Weidenhausen Bridge, which were destroyed during the flood. In 1579 the church was finally turned into a stately granary (until 1653). The walled-up ventilation hatches for storage floors can still be seen above the west portal. The Kornmarkt on the long side of the church, once the monk's cemetery, still reminds of the secular function of the place. On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the university in 1927, the interior of the church was extensively restored. The rood screen with its expressionistic balustrade is well worth seeing.

Today the church fulfills a double function: It is the church of the evangelical reformed city and university community. Since their restoration for Protestant worship by Landgrave Wilhelm VI. (1629–1663) in 1658 it was also a garrison church until the Second World War . It owes its religious orientation to the small Lower Hessian Reformed community that has existed since 1607 (initially members of the court, the garrison, the civil service and the university). With the introduction of the “points of improvement” in 1605 by Landgrave Moritz the Scholar (1572–1632), the university had converted from the Lutheran to the Reformed camp. In 1604 Moritz took over the inheritance of his uncle Ludwig IV (1537-1604), a Lutheran, who died childless . Empty niches and destroyed reliefs on the west side of the church point to the Reformed religion's ban on images ( Mauritian iconoclasm ). The reformed orientation of the university continued into the 19th century, interrupted by a Lutheran period in the Thirty Years' War, when Marburg belonged to the Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt (1624–1645) and the Landgrave there united the University of Giessen, founded in 1607 as a Lutheran training center, with Marburg and reestablished the old Hessian velvet university in Marburg for its territories.

The foundation of the Marburg university is owed to the Reformation, which found its way into Hesse from 1526 ( Homberg Synod ) under the young Landgrave Philip. The new faith required an educational establishment for the training of pastors, judges, officials, teachers and doctors, which was then founded by the princely sovereign out of his own authority. Landgrave Philipps' freedom letter for his foundation is dated August 31, 1529, the endowment document for economic security is dated October 4, 1540; the university privilege, which is important for the recognition of academic degrees throughout the empire, was only granted retrospectively on July 16, 1541 by Emperor Charles V , otherwise the usual papal confirmation was missing for obvious reasons.

Initially without a secure legal status, the University of Marburg strengthened the circle of older German universities such as Heidelberg (founded in 1386), Leipzig (founded in 1409), Tübingen (founded in 1477) and Wittenberg (founded in 1502). The universale studium Marpurgense was opened on May 30, 1527 with the enrollment of 105 people (professors, students, civil servants) and ceremoniously launched in the old Dominican monastery on July 1, 1527 as the first Protestant university to be established. According to the will of the founder, the new university was committed to "common use". The monastery had previously been secularized - like the Franciscan monastery on the southwest and that of the Kugelherren on the western outskirts - buildings and monastic goods and the income from them were allocated to the university for use and financial resources. The Dominican monks and their prior, at last 12 people, were mutually persuaded to move out and were settled with monetary payments; They were allowed to keep equipment and books. Books from the possession of the Franciscans with their resistant Guardian Nikolaus Ferber and literature from the Kugelherren, however, were later transferred to the holdings of the Marburg University Library .

In addition to the church, the Dominican monastery comprised a large east wing attached to it with sacristy, refectory (dining room), dormitory (dormitory in winter) and chapter room (meeting room) as well as the monks' cells on the upper floor. A kitchen wing was attached to the west side of the east wing. To the south of the church, adjoining the cloister, there was another building, the so-called "Südbau", which was used from 1529 as a pedagogy and thus as a school and also a hostel for young scholarship holders ( Hessian scholarship institution ) and other students who are here on the University studies have been prepared. The building finally contained classrooms, apartments for the school director and a prison attendant, as well as a high school prison ; In the attic there were also four detention cells for students who had conspicuous disciplines. The entire monastery grounds were surrounded by a wall. The Dominican monastery became the main building of the new university. With reference to its location, it was named Collegium Lani "Lahn-Kolleg" and was left to the faculty of lawyers, also offered space for the university administration and the senate and, in the first year of the university, also a teaching room and accommodation for students and professors until 1528 the Franciscan monastery could be taken over. The former refectory of the Dominicans was transformed into a magnificent hall (large auditorium, assembly hall) and later furnished with portraits of the sovereigns and, from 1600, with portraits of professors. An early beneficiary of the old monastery garden was probably the humanist, botanist and first medicine professor Euricius Cordus (1486–1535) from Simtshausen bei Wetter, who moved into an apartment in the monastery.

The demolition of the monastery began in the summer of 1873, after the southern lining wall (retaining wall) and part of the former kitchen had collapsed in 1846; eight students of the pedagogue and now grammar school were buried in the collapse at that time, three of them did not survive the accident. The university was rebuilt in the neo-Gothic style according to plans by the university master builder Carl Schäfer (1844–1908) in two sections; The church and the former sacristy have been preserved. Between 1874 and 1879 a wing for auditoriums, seminar libraries, meeting rooms and rooms for the administration and the rectorate was built, and an apartment for the castellan and two student dungeons on the same level were planned on the western upper floor. The philological and historical disciplines, the lawyers and the theologians benefited from the construction work; Scientists and medical professionals had been able to move into new buildings in the northern part of the city in the previous decades. The inauguration of the first construction phase took place from May 28th to 30th, 1879 in the presence of the Prussian Minister of Education, Adalbert Falk (1827-1900). Between 1885 and 1891 the construction of the auditorium, a senate and doctoral hall and other lecture halls followed to the east. The solemn occupation of this building fell on June 26, 1891; the interior of the auditorium was to continue until 1903 with the installation of the last pictures by the Düsseldorf painter Peter Janssen (1844–1908). Reconstruction measures in recent times, in the years 1964–1967 in favor of the theologians, who were now housed alone in the house, led, among other things, to the dissolution of the old gardens (today: parking lot), the redesign of the inner courtyard and the removal of original furniture.

Barefoot monastery and first university library

A building complex separated from the street, which is now the Faculty of Economics Am Plan (No. 1–2), received its architectural form in the 19th century. Here, at the southwest exit of the city, was the Franciscan Minorite or Barefoot Monastery (after the barefoot feet of the brothers). The monks were probably with St. Elisabeth (1207–1231) came to Marburg and had established their branch here after 1235, after the Order of Teutonic Knights ( Deutscher Orden ) had taken over the Franziskushospital in the Talaue with the grave of its founder, who died at the age of just 24 years Friars Minor had not had a chance. After the introduction of the Reformation, the brothers held on to their old faith and left their monastery in protest at the end of May 1528. This was given to the university as an additional space in its early days and, due to its location between the moat and the western city wall, was initially called Collegium Pomerii 'Kolleg am Stadtgraben', later Collegium philosophicum .

The monastery did not have any property worth mentioning. An associated brewery was given to the city by the landgrave as early as 1527. The church in the north of the area with its slender roof turret fell into desolation and was temporarily a wood store; On its foundations and including the southern church wall, the university riding arena (“dry riding track”) was to be built in 1731/32 . Philip had his mother's bones resting in the house of worship transferred to the Elizabeth Church, and tombstones were also removed. The main building in the south, resting in full length on the city wall, served the artists , i.e. the subjects later to be assigned to the Philosophical Faculty , as a lecture and disputation site, and the doctors with their lecture hall were housed here. In 1609 a chemical laboratory ( Johannes Hartmann (universal scholar) ) was installed in the former sacristy . In addition, two official apartments for professors, including one for the librarian, and a room for the university library were set up in the main building . A transverse building in the east of the site, with a facade facing the plan, was reserved for the Academici (students) among the scholarship holders , at times around 30 minors (beginners) and around half a dozen majors (advanced, younger teachers). The fellows building contained a detention cell as a list of spaces from 1743 suggests where is a room called "The prison" is mentioned. The head and academic mentor of the scholarship holders, called Ephorus , had his household on the east corner of the main building, which was connected to the scholarship holder via the covered “college corridor”. Via this corridor, the scholarship holders reached their latrine, which - like the stepping stone of the Ephorus - was located high up on the outer wall of the main building on the valley side. In addition, there were farm buildings, a cloister and a small garden within the monastery area.

The basis for the Marburg University Library was a collection of books set up in the palace. This collection initially also included books and manuscripts from dissolved Hessian monasteries, such as those from the Augustinian monastery in Alsfeld and from the Cistercian abbey of Haina . There is also evidence that a number of writings came from the possession of the Marburg Franciscans and the Kugelkloster , the third home of the Philippina. In 1606, the library's entire book inventory comprised around 1150 volumes, including a donation of 500 volumes from the estate of Count Christoph Ernst zu Diez (1543–1603), a son of Philip's next marriage. The majority of the holdings contained works with a theological or religious reference, including the main works by the reformers.

From 1533 onwards, the library was housed in a relatively dark room measuring 46 feet by 26 feet by 10 feet (1 foot = about 0.285 m) on the western upper floor of the Franciscan south building. Access was via the official apartment of the librarian who lived on the same floor, a professor who performed the job of university librarian in a - paid - part-time job. The fund for new books was modest. The requirement laid down in the University's statutes of 1564 to put books on chains - as in the old monastery libraries - was circumvented to allow them to be loaned to professors. In 1627 a legal dispute between the Darmstadt and the Kassel landgrave led to the division of the library holdings between the universities of Marburg and Gießen. The people of Giessen who worked in Marburg between 1624 and 1645 - the reformed Marburg University had moved to Kassel - spent their share in Giessen after the end of the Thirty Years' War, so that when Marburg University was relocated in 1653, only around 800 volumes were in the local library were counted.

In 1687 their holdings had grown again to 1,414 volumes; Theological writings came out on top in terms of number, followed by works of philosophy, jurisprudence, history, and medicine. In the meantime, students were also allowed to borrow books against a guarantee. The library was open two days a week for 1–2 hours. To strengthen the library budget, doctoral students and newly enrolled students had to make a financial contribution in the 18th century. But even with these additional funds, a noteworthy expansion and book maintenance was hardly possible. Donations such as those of the orientalist Johann Joachim Schröder (1680–1756), who donated rare specialist books, or those of the University Chancellor Johann Georg Estor (1699–1773), who kept his library of almost 9,000 volumes, mostly books on law and history, were welcome . Bequeathed to the university in 1768 and more than doubled its book inventory. In order to be able to accommodate Estor's books, the library room was considerably expanded by adding the adjoining professor's apartment. The now bright rooms were given tables and chairs so that work could now be carried out in the library. According to Friedrich Gedike's judgment of 1789, however, the Marburg University Library was “insignificant, at most 18,000 volumes without a plan. The largest part of this small fund comes from a share in the penalties, especially when a student ransom the carcer, for which he pays 3 thalers for each day. ”(Fester 1905, p. 40 f.).

Acquisitions from professorial libraries as well as other donations, for example that of the philosopher Johannes Bering (philosopher) (1748–1825) in 1816 in the amount of 1230 volumes, ultimately helped to increase the inventory. The university library received its greatest boost in this regard as early as the Westphalian period (1807–1813), when extensive holdings of the Teutonic Order Commander Lucklum , the Corvey Benedictine Abbey and the dissolved Rinteln University came to Marburg. According to the “Earth Description of the Electorate of Hesse” from 1826 (p. 130), Marburg had a library of almost 100,000 volumes with almost 400 students enrolled. When the Prussians took over the University of Marburg in 1866, the number of students had finally fallen back to below 300; the usual annual frequency of the Philippina in the first three centuries of its existence rarely exceeded 200.

Since the 1820s, renovations and extensions have been carried out repeatedly in the library; the exterior of the library building was then completed in 1860. The west wing, which housed the Archaeological Institute until 1878 , was built in 1850 and was also intended as an apartment for the librarian. The dilapidated scholarship building and the “Collegiengang” were demolished in 1811/12; This ended the convict-like coexistence of the scholarship holders. In 1900, the university library moved into a new building at Universitätsstraße 25. The rooms on the plan that had become vacant were used by the German Department until it moved to the towers in Wilhelm-Röpke-Straße in 1967, and after 1945, further institutes were located in the building complex Faculty of Philosophy and Political Science an accommodation.

Second university library

A steep staircase at the eastern corner of today's seminar building on Plan leads down to Universitätsstraße. Here you get an unusual view of the mighty city wall, reinforced by buttresses, which supports the seminar building in its full length. The path continues to the rear of the new library building from 1900, an eight-storey clinker brick building built in the late Gothic style, which stands out with its distinctive stepped gable. The library's book holdings, including the holdings that were temporarily relocated during the war, were kept there until 1946. Then the university library temporarily moved to the premises of the Hessian State Archives on Friedrichsplatz, and then, after the completion of a modern library building at Wilhelm-Röpke-Straße 4 (formerly: Krummbogen), it moved again in 1967/68. Between 1946 and the beginning of the 1970s, the library building on Universitätsstrasse housed the book collections of the Prussian State Library in Berlin that had been relocated to the public due to the war and which the Americans had brought to Marburg ( West German Library ) in 1945 from the Ransbach-Heimboldshausen mine (Philippstal), among others ; Parts of the inventory were also stored in the Wilhelmsbau of the Marburg Palace. The library building at Universitätsstrasse 25 is now used by the Department of Economics, which has combined its once decentralized specialist libraries here under one roof.

University equestrian center

The stately baroque building with its mansard roof in Barfüßerstraße 1 / corner Am Plan was once reserved for students' riding pleasure: it housed the university's riding arena.

The building was erected on the foundations of the former Franciscan monastery church. On its west side, the former (eastern) chancel of the church has been incorporated into the architecture of the new building. The initials of the founder, Landgrave Friedrich I (1676–1751), and the year of inauguration (1731) can be found above the walled-up east entrance on the plan . The north portal of the building is adorned with a Hessian coat of arms and the year 1732 (building completion?). Until about 1870 the university maintained a riding institute for students under the direction of specially employed riding instructors. The riding business came to a standstill in the following years, also because the university did not employ a riding instructor for several years, until finally, in the 1880s, lessons were revived in a new riding stable at Haspelstraße 35 and again under the direction of a university riding instructor.

In 1876, the university leased its riding house to the city, which used the building as a "social building" and had two halls in the house for music and theater performances ("Saalbau"). In 1877 the celebrations for the 350th anniversary of the University of Marburg took place in the premises. During the construction work on the former Dominican monastery between 1872/73 and 1879, the student prison was relocated to the top floor of the riding house. These were finally closed in 1906 when space was needed in the building for the university's archaeological collections. In 1898 the large hall in the house was converted into an academic gymnasium, which will later be followed by a gymnastics room. From 1920 to 1923 the first academica cafeteria found shelter in the old riding house, which was then available to the newly founded institute for physical exercise from 1924 and which is still a center for sports science and student sports today.

Marburg spherical monastery

Kugelkirche from the northeast

Kugelhaus from the northeast

Kugelhaus southeast corner with inscriptions from 1491

Coat of arms of lay judge Heinrich Imhof and his wife Elisabeth, b. von Treisbach in the Kugelkirche

Kugelkirche ( St. Johannes Evangelist (Marburg) ) and Kugelhaus (Kugelgasse 10), the third building complex from the time the Philippina was founded, owe their existence to the wealthy Marburg alder Heinrich Imhof , known as Rode, a former rector of Leipzig University , and his wife Elisabeth , born from Treisbach. Both wanted to contribute their earthly wealth to a spiritual foundation, which should include a collegiate church and a house in which clerics and lay people could live in a Christian community. The model was the reform community of the “ Brothers of Common Life ”, the “spherical gentlemen”, as they were called after their hood-like headgear, the Gugel ( cuculla in Middle Latin ), which arose in the Netherlands in the 14th century . After the Landgrave's approval and confirmation by the Pope, the foundation was set up in 1477 and three brother lords from Münster were appointed to Marburg. The church was built from 1478, it was consecrated in 1485, in the same year the cemetery on the south side of the church was also consecrated for the members of the community. The adjoining convent house was built after the completion of the church. The indication 1491 on a cuboid in the southeast corner of the building indicates the year of completion. The coat of arms of the donors, carved into a neighboring cuboid, was - like other figurative decorations on the house - destroyed during the Mauritian iconoclasm in 1605. An inscription refers to this coat of arms, which gave the house its name: "This is called the fraterhuss zˉm lewˉnbach", ie "Fraterhaus zum Löwenbach" - after the lion striding over a sloping stream in the coat of arms of the donors. In 1506 the building was extended to the west.

The late Gothic spherical church is a single-aisled square building with seven short yokes and a six-sided roof turret. The net vault was painted in many colors around 1520, and the stone wall tabernacle in the form of a hexagonal tower comes from the same time. Old entrances to the side rooms on the north and south sides were later bricked up. The Fraterhaus with cloister and the two uphill and three downhill floors as well as the tower-like toilet extension in the west sits directly on the city wall. A parapet walk on the wall required the brothers to perform special services. A wooden connecting building once stood between the church and the Fraterhaus, which was demolished and replaced by an extension in 1879 (stair tower and wash house). The large stepped gable in the east of the building was dismantled in 1860.

In 1514 eight friars formed the local convent . Without taking any actual vows, the brothers indulged in spiritual exercises and studies. They tried hard to read the scriptures in the original language and thus became promoters of classical studies. Its library contained numerous works by Greek and Roman authors. Among other things, they earned money by copying books, especially the Bible. In addition, they ran their own school, which was attended by sons of noble and middle-class families. The brother Heinrich Keck, who was praised as a scholar, was the teacher of the young Landgrave Philipp. When the Reformation was introduced in 1526, a priest and eleven other people belonged to the fraternity. Some of them converted to the Protestant faith and were allowed to stay in the house, others were compensated; some studied at the new university. Monks from other abolished monasteries were also temporarily granted right to live in the Fraterhaus.

The Church of the Brothers became theological lecture hall, the Fraterhaus from 1533 for the economic use of the theological scholarship holders as well as the apartment of the professor primarius of the theological faculty. Another professor and the economist , the university bailiff, who managed the income, including various natural deliveries (grain, geese, chickens, wood), of the former Dominican monastery , the spherical monastery and the women's monastery Caldern ( Caldern monastery ), were accommodated in the house . According to the budget of the State of Hesse, income from "Universitätsgut" and "Universitätswald" Caldern contributed to the financing of the Philipps University in 2000! From 1546 scholarship holders also lived in the house.

A university provost, who lived in the Kugelhaus until the 19th century, provided the common table for the scholars who were then concentrated in a building in the old barefoot monastery from 1560 to 1811; For a fee, other students from the kitchen and bakery of the "Propstei", which temporarily gave the Kugelhaus this name, were taken care of. The theological scholarship holders last dined in the cafeteria in the house in 1848. The scholarship institution - like all other former monastery buildings - had a prison, because in 1725 provost Jungclas d. Ä. admitted that he had "let the old carzer out of the walls, with a door frame next to the door with ties and bolts" (Meyer zu Ermgassen 1977, p. 170). In 1855 the university’s pharmaceutical and chemical laboratory moved to the Kugelhof.

In 1653 the celebrations for the reopening of the now reformed Marburg University took place in the Kugelkirche; In 1658 the Reformed congregation moved to the former Dominican church. In 1687 the Kugelkirche became a place of worship for French religious refugees . The building had been vacant since 1823, and Elector Wilhelm II (Hessen-Kassel) left the church to the growing Catholic community of Marburg, which has held services here since 1827. The Fraterhaus, which had been vacant from 1853, was transferred to the local justice offices in exchange for premises in the German House at the Elisabeth Church . At the time, the sanitary facilities in the Kugelhaus corresponded to the earlier, i.e. medieval, conditions, and so six years after the takeover, a judicial officer complained: “At the entrance to the premises of Justice Offices I and II are their depots. These cesspools, which cannot even be cleaned, spread such a pestilential stench, especially that pervading my business premises, which is detrimental to health, that it is unbearable [...]. ”(Keller 1982, p. 82). The master builder , who was asked to remedy the situation, considered a relocation of the outlets to be "impractical", but at least considered measures to remove the bad smell. After the judicial authorities had moved to a new district court building in Universitätsstrasse (No. 24), the Kugelhaus was returned to the university in 1894 and, for example, housed the newly founded Psychological Institute from 1923 ; After 1945, the Institute for Medieval History and the Research Institute of the German Language Atlas found workrooms here. In 1970/72 the house was rebuilt and offered accommodation to the Institute for Ethnology and Sports Science facilities. The university's development plan now provides for the sale of the building, which is in great need of renovation and which is the responsibility of the state administration, to the Catholic Church with the neighboring St. Johannes community.

Web links

Commons : Alte Universität Marburg - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

Academia Marburgensis. Volume 1 (1977): Contributions to the history of the Philipps University of Marburg. For the Department of History, ed. by W. Heinemeyer, Th. Klein and H. Seier. Marburg 1977. [Articles: Karl Heinemeyer: The Marburger Kugelherren as pioneers of the university. (Pp. 1-48); Walter Heinemeyer: On the foundation of the universale studium Marburgense. (Pp. 49-92); Peter Dilg: The beginnings of the Philipps University in the epigrams of Euricius Cordus. (Pp. 93-110); Hans Georg Gundel: The statutes of the University of Marburg from 1560. (p. 111–180); Thomas Klein: Conservatio Rei publicae per bonam educationem. Life and work of Hermann Kirchner (1562–1620). (Pp. 181-230); Peter Scheibert: Lomonosov, Christian Wolff and the University of Marburg. (Pp. 231-240); Karl Christ: On the development of ancient history teaching and research at the Philipps University in the period 1870–1976. (Pp. 241-302); Volker Losemann: The Marburg Castle Plan 1927–1945. Changes in the history of a research project. (Pp. 353-405)].

Hans Günther Bickert / Norbert Nail: Marburger Karzer book . Small cultural history of the university prison. Third, revised and increased edition. Marburg 2013.

Martin Cremer: West German Library (collection of the former Prussian State Library). Construction and development 1946 - 1949 . Marburg 1950.

The Institute for Physical Exercise at Philipps University. Ceremony for the 400th anniversary of the university. Edited by P [eter] Jaeck. Marburg 1927.

Georg Dehio: Handbook of the German art monuments. Hessen I. Administrative districts of Giessen and Kassel . Edited by Folkhard Cremer, Tobias Michael Wolf and others. Munich / Berlin 2008.

The introduction of the improvement points in Hesse from 1604–1610 and the emergence of the Hessian church order from 1657 as a contribution to the history of the German Reformed Church documented by Heinrich Heppe. Kassel 1849.

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50.80793 8.77179 198Coordinates: 50 ° 48 ′ 28.5 ″ N , 8 ° 46 ′ 18.4 ″ E