Monday club

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The Berlin Monday Club (also: Der Klubb , Montags-Klubb , Monday Society ; later: Monday Club ) is one of the oldest sociable civic associations in Berlin . It still exists today.

history

The Monday Club was founded in October 1749 by the Swiss clergyman Johann Georg Schulthess , who brought the idea to found this club from his home country.

The club, which initially called itself just "The Club", soon added the meeting day in its name. That the association was not tied to the person of Schulthess, but had found its place in the Berlin citizenship, became apparent when Schulthess left Berlin two years later. The Monday Club continued to work, the members met regularly on Mondays, first in various restorations, from 1789 in the " Englischer Haus ", a social bar at Mohrenstrasse 49, for a sociable exchange on all areas of science and the arts.

The Monday Club did not see itself as a scientific association, reading society or salon , but as a place for a "free, cheerful conversation" between congenial men. Women were denied membership.

In the 1750s, with the accession of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Friedrich Nicolai, it developed into a center of the Berlin Enlightenment . Moses Mendelssohn is said to have also joined the Monday Club as a member of the association. However, he is not listed in the membership directory of this association. Mendelssohn was a devout Jew and held fast to this belief. Although he was invited to meetings of the Monday club, he declined because he did not want to attend the compulsory meals because of the Jewish dietary laws. The club was in connection with the journal Kritische Nachrichten aus dem Erreichsamkeit, published since 1748 by Johann Georg Sulzer and Karl Wilhelm Ramler (two founding members of the Monday Club) .

From the beginning, the Monday Club offered a forum for conviviality and discussion across class and professional barriers. Statesmen, lawyers, theologians, philologists, artists, physicians, writers and booksellers met weekly for a joint meal and lively conversation. Since the association was one of the first of its kind, the formalization of its existence and work began relatively late. Statutes were only drawn up in 1787. In accordance with these statutes, the members were elected by balloting with a maximum of one vote against. Guests could be introduced at any time. Games - with the exception of chess - and tobacco smoking were prohibited.

A guest book has been kept since 1787. In the first 150 years, over 5000 guests attended the gatherings, including Alexander von Humboldt , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Johann Gottlieb Fichte , Adelbert von Chamisso and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel .

In the 19th century, the Monday Club went through a significant change in that the multi-class character that had shaped the early phase increasingly disappeared. While the proportion of merchants and tradespeople declined, the number of high-ranking civil servants and the military rose, along with the average age. They didn't meet so often in the club anymore, but more often at public festivities. The members were increasingly national-conservative and supportive of the state; the meetings were devoted to purely social intercourse. At all times, however, the entertainment should also serve instruction; free speech was based on absolute mutual trust.

After 1907 the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais , from the mid-1930s the Harnack-Haus, became a meeting place. During the Second World War , the club's activities largely came to a standstill, but could be revived from 1949. Today the members meet on the first Monday of each month, alternately at noon and in the evening, in a Berlin pub to eat and debate. In recent years, the members have also regularly visited exhibitions in museums and castles in Berlin and the surrounding area with their partners.

Structure and organization

The Monday Club was never a registered association . At no time did he own his own house.

The meetings were chaired by the "senior" - the member who had been with the club the longest. In addition to the senior, other “officials”, the so-called “select committee”, directed the club business, including a sub-senior, an accounting officer, a secretary and an archivist. Quarterly general assemblies were held in which the club's internals were discussed. The foundation festival was celebrated annually.

The club was financed through membership fees. The association regularly donated financial surpluses to charitable causes, such as feeding the poor in 1806, clothing poor schoolchildren in 1807, the victims of the Königsberg fire in 1811 and the war-impoverished residents of Kurmark in 1813; also the widows and orphans of buried miners from the Gontay mine near Aachen, those affected by floods from the Oder and Elbe or storm surges on the Baltic Sea; there are also donations for patriotic purposes, e.g. B. for the Cologne cathedral building, for the invalids of the liberation wars. In 1806 “500 thalers were sacrificed to satisfy the French contributions for the fatherland”.

After the Second World War, a general meeting only takes place once a year, no longer quarterly as it used to be. The foundation festival is also celebrated, generally on the first Monday of every new year, to which the members' partners are also invited. The meetings, previously chaired by the senior, have been chaired by the association's spokesman for several decades. The treasury is administered by a treasurer.

The club archive is lost; Nothing is known about the whereabouts of the club's picture gallery of its members.

Connections to other clubs

The Monday Club was firmly integrated into the sociable Berlin network. There were numerous personal overlaps between the Monday Club and, for example, the Secret Wednesday Society of Enlightenment (1783–1798), the Society of Friends of Humanity (1797–1861), the Philomatic Society (1800–1828), the Outlaw Society founded in 1806 (ab 1826 Die Zwanglose), the Lawless Society founded in 1809 (No. 2) , the Society of Friends of Nature Research (since 1773), the Christian-German Table Society (from 1811), the Chess Club (since 1803), the Prussian Main Bible Society (from 1814 ) and the Masonic lodges .

Members (chronological, selection)

For the first ten years, membership was limited to 24; from 1809 it was increased to 30. Today there is no limit to the number of members, but the number will not exceed 30.

The years after the following persons indicate the length of membership.

Monday Club publications (chronological)

  • Calendar of the Monday Club in Berlin to the year 1789 ; Berlin 1789. 8 °.
  • Paperback from the Montag Klub in Berlin as a manuscript for the members and friends of the club ; Berlin 1789.
  • Calendar of the Monday Club in Berlin to the year 1798 ; Berlin 1798. 8 °.
  • Foreign exchange at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Monday Club d. April 16, 1798 ; Berlin 1798.
  • To the Feyer of the 50-year foundation of the Monday Society (poems) ; Berlin 1798.
  • Friedrich Gedike: To the Monday club at its jubilee on April 16, 1798. Parody of the Göthischen song “Know the country…” ; Berlin 1798.
  • To the Feyer of the 55 year old Foundation of the Monday Society (songs) ; Berlin 1803.
  • Monday songs. When the Monday Society celebrated the birthday of their senior IE Biester on November 23 ; Berlin 1812. 8 °.
  • New laws of the Berlin Monday Club of January 3, 1814 ; Berlin 1814.
  • To celebrate the five and seventy years of the Monday Club in Berlin. October 18, 1824 ; Berlin 1824.
  • Calendar of the Monday Club in Berlin ; Berlin 1828.
  • Continuation of the list of members of the Monday Club as a supplement to the calendar of 1828, January 1843 ; Berlin 1843.
  • Friedrich Gustav Lisco : The Monday Club. 1748 ; in: Ders .: Das Wohlthätige Berlin, Berlin 1846, pp. 95f.
  • The Monday Club. Completed October 29, 1866. List of members since its inception ; Berlin 1866.
  • Gustav Adolf Sachse, Eduard Droop (ed.): The Monday Club in Berlin 1749-1899. Festive and commemorative publication for his 150th annual celebration ; Berlin 1899. [With list of members who joined from 1749 to 1898.]
  • Report on the 150th anniversary of the Monday Club in Berlin on October 23, 1899 ; Berlin 1900.
  • Reinhold von Sydow: The Monday Club in Berlin from 1899 to 1924 ; Berlin: 1924.
  • Reinhold von Sydow: The Monday Club in Berlin 1899 to 1924. Reprint and continuation until 1935 ; Berlin 1936. [With list of members who joined from 1869 to 1935.]
  • Friedrich Schmidt-Ott, Walter von Hagens: The Monday Club in Berlin from 1899 to 1955 ; Berlin 1955 [separate print for members; with a list of members who joined from 1869 to 1955.]

literature

  • Johann Friedrich Abegg: travel diary from 1798 , ed. v. Walter and Jolanda Abegg; Frankfurt (Main): Insel Verlag, 1987, pp. 281-285.
  • Ingeborg Allihn: The Berlin Monday Club (1749–1935) ; in: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Concepts 4 (1990).
  • Kenneth Keeton: The Berliner Montagsklub, a center of German enlightenment ; in: Germanic Review 39 (1961), New York, pp. 148-153.
  • Max von Oesfeld: On the history of the Berlin Monday club. A contribution to the Prussian cultural history of the last century ; in: Journal for Prussian History and Regional Studies 16 (1879), pp. 328–352.
  • J [oseph] v. Sonnenfels: To the friends of the Monday Club in Berlin ; in: Berlinische Monatsschrift 10 (1787) October issue, pp. 350–355.
  • Erich Steffen: A club in old Berlin (Monday club) ; in: Mitteilungen des Verein für die Geschichte Berlins 27 (1910), pp. 119–121.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gustav Adolf Sachse a. Eduard Droop (Ed.): The Monday Club in Berlin 1749-1899: Fest- u. Commemorative publication for his 150th annual celebration . J. Sittenfeld, Berlin 1899, p. 3
  2. ↑ Thomas Lackmann in conversation with Michael Köhler, A microcosm of German-Jewish history, 250 years of Mendelssohn - an anniversary congress on a cultural dynasty, Deutschlandfunk, June 22, 2012, digital [1]
  3. ↑ Ulrich Wyrwa, Jews in Tuscany and Prussia in Comparison, 2003, p. 37, digital [2]