Melanchthon House Wittenberg

The Melanchthonhaus in Lutherstadt Wittenberg is one of the most beautiful town houses in the city. The Renaissance building with its late Gothic windows and the round arched staggered gable houses the furnished study and death room of Philipp Melanchthon , in which he and his family lived. Since 1954 the house has served as a museum in which Philipp Melanchthon's life and work are made accessible to the public. Pictures, prints and manuscripts by Melanchthon and his contemporaries are shown with a restrained authenticity. Since 1996 the Melanchthon House has been part of the Reformation sites of Lutherstadt Wittenberg as a UNESCO World Heritage Site .

history

Philipp Melanchthon was appointed professor in Wittenberg in 1518. After his marriage to Katharina Krapp on November 25, 1520, both of them moved into the property at Collegienstraße 62. Initially, there was a decaying clay building on the property, which Melanchthon also called “Bude”.

When Melanchthon threatened to move out of Wittenberg in 1536, the new three-storey scholarly house with the large adjoining garden was built for him at the expense of Elector Johann Friedrich I, the Magnanimous , and the university . This moved him to stay in Wittenberg in 1537, as the property raised him to the status of a full citizen with the associated rights and the house had running water as early as 1556 due to the connection to the pipe water system.

After Melanchthon's death on April 19, 1560, the living room and death room on the street side were allegedly whitewashed black and the house later served as the university's professor's apartment. Between 1796 and 1808 stables for horses and pigs were built next to an existing courtyard building. In 1810 the living room, study and death room were prepared and opened for inspection. In 1845 the privately owned building was sold to the Prussian state and renovated. Wall paintings on the second floor were uncovered and a window with medieval round slugs was rebuilt.

The Melanchthon House on a permanent postage stamp

During further repair work in 1897, more paintings were found in the death room. Since these were only preserved in fragments, it was decided to replenish them. Since then, the interior of the building has basically had the appearance it does today. After the neighboring house to the east was destroyed in an air raid on April 20, 1945, the following courtyard building was removed. In 1954 the local history museum was set up in the Melanchthon House.

Museum of the life and work of Melanchthon

An independent museum facility that made the life and work of Philipp Melanchthon accessible to the public was initiated in 1967 by the city's cultural administration. From 1983 (Luther's anniversary), the Melanchthon House developed as a counterweight to the Luther Hall and, above all, placed the humanist Melanchthon in the foreground.

As a result of the experience, the museum concept changed in 1997 into Melanchthon's permanent exhibition “ Ad fontes ” (“to the sources”, i.e. back to the original texts of faith and humanism).

literature

Friedrich B. Bellmann, Marie Luise Harksen, Roland Werner: The monuments of Lutherstadt Wittenberg. Böhlau 1979
Insa Christiane Hennen: Ad fontes !: Catalog for the permanent exhibition in the Melanchthonhaus. Reformation history museums Wittenberg, Wittenberg 1997, ISBN 9783000015588
Helmar Junghans: Wittenberg as Lutherstadt. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1979.