Juleum
The Juleum , also Juleum Novum , is a multi-storey lecture hall and library building of the former university in the Lower Saxony district town of Helmstedt in Germany . The building was erected between 1592 and 1612 in the Weser Renaissance style and is one of the most important secular buildings of this era in northern Germany.
history
With the founding of the Guelph University by Duke Julius in Helmstedt in 1576, the necessity of erecting a representative main building and lecture hall soon became clear. Up until that time, the lectures were mostly held in the professors' homes. The increasing number of students and the ambition of the duke and the university management led to the first plans for a palace-like building. In October 1592 , Duke Heinrich Julius commissioned the ducal master builder Paul Francke , who had already built the two college buildings of the university as wings, to carry out the construction. The plans envisaged a large auditorium maximum for theologians and philosophers on the ground floor, in which the university celebrations should also take place, and two separate lecture halls for the lawyers and medical professionals on the upper floor. A wine cellar with two heated taprooms was designed in the basement. Duke Heinrich Julius is said to have replied to critics that the students should learn to trample Bacchus .
A year later, construction began on the municipal property of the Mariental monastery in Helmstedt, the "Grauen Hof". The functional and typological models for the system were a. the buildings of the University of Altdorf and the New College in Oxford . The stone carvings and the creation of the extensive figure decorations were carried out by Jacob Meyerheine . In 1597, the main construction work was completed with the roofing of the building. However, the official inauguration of the building did not take place until October 15, 1612 - exactly 20 years after the building was awarded - in the absence of the Duke who was in Prague and who named it "Juleum" in memory of his father and university founder.
Major renovation work was carried out in 1715 after storm damage to the stair tower and in 1765 by merging the legal and medical lecture rooms into one large library room on the upper floor.
After the university closed in 1810, the Juleum was still used sporadically by local schools. The increasing decay made renovations necessary. The most extensive restoration and renovation work took place between 1966 and 1971, during which the new entrance area on the south side was created. The cellar was redesigned to become today's district and university museum and a large auditorium was created on the ground floor for festive events and scientific lectures. The Helmstedt University Days take place here every autumn . The library hall still houses the remains of the former university library with currently around 35,000 volumes. The other books are in the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel .
Stair tower with ducal coat of arms
Main portal
Auditorium maximum
West gable and south front
Aerial view from the south
Building description
The building, erected as an auditorium and lecture hall, is 40 meters long and 17 meters wide and has a 56-meter-high octagonal stair tower on the south side with a gallery above. The upper and attic floors are only accessible via this featured tower.
The main portal on the south side of the building is right next to the tower and is adorned with five figures of the seven liberal arts (Septem artes liberales): "Astronomy" with a celestial sphere (portal tip), "Grammar" with pen and blackboard (second row on the left), "Arithmetic" with blackboard and numbers (second row on the right), "Music" with lute (lower row on the left) and "Geometry" with compass and scroll (lower row on the right). The figures “rhetoric” and “dialectic”, which probably used to stand on the left and right of the door in the shell niches, are missing. The statues symbolize the philosophical faculty. Also above the portal is the coat of arms of the university, which depicts the biblical figure Samson taking honey from a dead lion (Book of Judges 14, 14: "... sweet things come from the strong" - frequent interpretation: Whoever has the strength of science [lion ] owns, gains the riches of knowledge [honey]).
The tower portal leads to the spiral staircase in the tower. The coat of arms of Duke Heinrich Julius above the door has a twelve-field shield and five helmets. The Braunschweiger Ross is located above the helmets on the Wolfenbüttel column. The top cornice ends with three armored boys wearing shields.
The lecture halls are characterized by allegorical figures on the gables. On the eastern side is the figure of Justice with scales and sword ( Justitia , Faculty of Law), the west gable is decorated with a figure with a snake staff and chalice (Faculty of Medicine). The south front of the Juleum shows two dwarf houses richly decorated with warrior figures . On their tips there is a figure with a cross and a book (theological faculty) on the left and a sculpture with a dove (philosophical faculty) on the right. On the north side of the building there are three dwelling houses whose gables are without figures.
Above the windows on the ground floor there are various figure busts around the building in the lintels. The three busts on the south side are a citizen captain (with a helmet), a councilor (with a ruff) and the so-called "Hohenbuhlsche" above today's main entrance, an undressed woman with a necklace. On the east gable are the busts of a Moor and a warrior, on the west gable Till Eulenspiegel and a woman with a headscarf. The north side is decorated with various male busts.
- The basement
On the eastern side there are two former drinking rooms. The northern taproom used to be accessible via the north portal with a porch. This room has a cross vault and a fireplace. The other drinking room has a flat ceiling and was accessible via a spiral staircase from the old library room on the ground floor during university days. To the west is the former wine cellar, which is now the museum.
- The ground floor
The auditorium is 28 meters long and 13.5 meters wide. Because of the load from the upper floor, it is provided with three pillars along its length. The ceiling construction is supported by visible wooden beams (coffered ceiling). During university days, the unheated auditorium had a floor made of sandstone slabs. Boards were not laid until the end of the 19th century. Today's eastern anteroom (cloakroom) can be reached through the entrance area created after the restoration and housed the university library until the 18th century.
- The upper floor
Originally there were two square lecture halls (14.30 meters by 14.30 meters), in the west for the doctors and in the east for the lawyers. In the middle between the lecture rooms was a vestibule , which at times also served as a “disputation chamber”. Around 1765, Duke Charles I had these rooms combined to form the library hall and relocated the book inventory from the ground floor to the upper floor. The stucco monogram of the duke with the crown above on the ceiling of the hall is reminiscent of these conversions. Both on the walls and at a distance of approx. 75 cm from them, 3.5 meter high bookshelves were installed, so that between them there was a corridor around the entire hall. In the central area there were several rows of standing desks. In order to increase the load-bearing capacity, iron girders were embedded in the ground during the restoration in the 20th century. This raised the floor of the library room by 50 cm.
- The attic
The attic can be reached through an artistically designed round sandstone arch. Its column-free ceiling is suspended in the roof structure. The weight is shifted by special beam constructions in such a way that it rests completely on the outer walls.
With the renovation in the 1960s, the building also received its current appearance. Since the original color of the building was no longer known, the monument protection department decided in favor of the current striking red after comparing it with other contemporary buildings.
See also
literature
- Harmen Thies : The Juleum Novum - Paul Francke . Contributions to the history of the district and the former University of Helmstedt, issue 9/1997, ISBN 3-937733-08-6
- Rolf Volkmann: The Juleum in Helmstedt . Key monuments , Issue 433, Munich / Berlin 1992
- Sabine Ahrens: Academia Julia - The University of Helmstedt 1576-1810 . Publication of the Kreismuseen Helmstedt, Volume 4, Wolfenbüttel 2000, ISBN 3-937733-74-4
- Ernst Andreas Friedrich : The Juleum in Helmstedt , in: If stones could talk , Volume III, Landbuch-Verlag, Hanover 1995, ISBN 3-7842-0515-1 , pp. 189-171.
Web links
Coordinates: 52 ° 13 ′ 45.5 ″ N , 11 ° 0 ′ 31.1 ″ E