Karl May House
The Karl-May-Haus in Hohenstein-Ernstthal is the birthplace of the writer Karl May (* 1842), at Karl-May-Straße 54. The building from the 17th century has been a registered cultural monument of the city since 1982 and has been located in 1985 In the building there is a museum about the life of Karl May.
history
According to an old drawing from 1688 in the court files, the house was probably already in the place described as a one-story building. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it changed hands several times; probably before 1767 it was increased.
In 1838 it went to Christiane Wilhelmine May geb. Wise. In 1842 Karl May was born there at Niedergasse 111 as the first of four siblings.
May's mother sold the house in 1845. It remained in the Schreiber family for over fifty years, then in 1900 it became the property of the Münch family, who owned it until 1967. In 1921 the house was identified as May's birthplace, whereupon it received a plaque in 1929. At the same time, part of Bahnstrasse was renamed Karl-May-Strasse. In 1938 there was a so-called Karl May Memorial Show on site .
Webunion took over the house in 1968, and from 1975 it was VEB Möbelstoff und Plüschwerke Hohenstein-Ernstthal.
In 1980 the house where Mays was born was placed under a preservation order and from 1982 onwards it was no longer used for residential purposes. By resolution of the council of the Hohenstein-Ernstthal district, the conversion to a museum facility for Karl May followed in 1983, which was followed by the renovation of the monument.
After preparing an exhibition on the writer, it was handed over to the public in 1985, who can also visit the May family's living and working space there. The garden of the birth house was arranged as it might have looked in May's time. The cellar was also included in the permanent exhibition.
The Karl May birthplace and the International Heritage Center in the Karl May meeting place serve to remember the writer Karl May. The former is home to the permanent exhibition on May's life and work. In the latter, the special exhibitions (traditionally the most important annually from February 25th to March 30th; others spread over the year) are presented and events are held. An exhibition room in the meeting place is dedicated to the city's second famous author: Werner Legère .
The Karl-May-Haus has been supported by a scientific advisory board since 1987, which among other things publishes the publication series "Karl-May-Haus Information" with research articles on the topic. The chairman of the advisory board is May researcher Hans-Dieter Steinmetz , who succeeded Karl May researcher Christian Heermann in this function .
Since February 2006 there has been a support association, “Silberbüchse e. V. “, chaired by MDR moderator Griseldis Wenner .
As of February 2018, an expansion of the Karl May exhibition is planned with the demolition of two ensemble-relevant old buildings and a subsequent modernist new building, which is to be completed in 2020.
Karl May about his parents' house
Karl May wrote about his parents' house:
- “... three narrow windows wide and made of wood, but it was three stories high and had a dovecote at the top under the ridge ... Grandmother, my father's mother, moved to the ground floor, where there was only one room with two windows and the front door there. Beyond that was a room with an old laundry roll that was rented to other people for two pfennigs an hour. There were happy Saturdays on which this roll fetched ten, twelve, even fourteen pfennigs. That promoted prosperity quite significantly. The parents lived with us on the first floor. There was the loom with the winding wheel. We lived on the second floor with a colony of mice and some larger rodents. ... There was also a cellar, but it was always empty. ... The yard was just big enough that the five children of us could stand up without bumping into each other. Adjacent to this was the garden in which there was an elder bush, an apple tree, a plum tree and a pool of water, which we called a 'pond'. "
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ History of the house.
- ↑ May House: Extension should be ready in 2020 , Freie Presse , February 21, 2018
- ↑ May, Karl: My life and striving. Volume I . Published by Friedrich Ernst Fehsenfeld, Freiburg i. Br., 1910. pp. 13f. ( Online version ; PDF; 16.9 MB)
Coordinates: 50 ° 48 ′ 2.1 ″ N , 12 ° 43 ′ 9.3 ″ E