Freiburg Museum Society
Freiburg Museum Society | |
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purpose | The society offers mentally and culturally interested citizens in and around Freiburg sociability in the appropriate framework, stimulation and education, as well as friendly cohesion. It promotes the arts and sciences and participates in shaping the cultural life of the city of Freiburg. (From the statutes of the museum society). |
Chair: | Heiko Steuer |
Establishment date: | 1807 |
Number of members: | about 160 |
Seat : | Freiburg in Breisgau |
Website: | museumsgesellschaft-freiburg.de |
The Freiburg Museum Society is a cultural association in Freiburg im Breisgau . The society was originally founded as a reading society on January 4th, 1807 , making it the oldest civil society in town.
history
Reading societies existed everywhere in Germany at that time, as they allowed an upscale and educated middle class of citizens and civil servants to collectively acquire the books and magazines that were expensive at the time and thus participate in the age of growing knowledge. However, the trigger for the establishment of a reading society in Freiburg was politically. In 1806 Napoleon ordered the attack of the Breisgau to the Grand Duchy of Baden . The Freiburgers were not asked and mourned the over 400-year rule of the Habsburgs . So when officials and military officers from the capital Karlsruhe to takeover came to Freiburg, the establishment of a civil Reading Society offered to the predominantly Protestant north of Baden with the largely Catholic south to marry , as the poet Johann Georg Jacobi put it. The Baden handover commissioner Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Friedrich Drais von Sauerbronn was not only the initiator, but logically also the first president of the Freiburg Reading Society. In addition, the founding members included intellectually and politically leading personalities in Freiburg such as:
- Lord Mayor Johann Joseph Adrians
- the councilor and court judge Baron Konrad von Andlaw
- the city director Freiherr Karl von Baden
- the surgery professor Alexander Ecker
- the publisher Bartholomä Herder
- the classical philologist and theologian Johann Leonhard Hug
- the Chapter Chancellor of the Order of Malta Joseph Albrecht von Ittner
- the poet Johann Georg Jacobi
- the historian Karl von Rotteck
- the university librarian Johann Kaspar Ruef
- the constitutional lawyer Karl Theodor Welcker
Soon after it was founded, the reading society felt obliged to include Klio (history) and other muses, such as Thalia (theater), Polyhymnia (music) and Terpsichore (dance). So-called social days - now with women - took place in the extended rooms, the "casino". The sanctuaries of the muses are called museion in Greek, and so the name of the society is consequently changed to the Latinized form museum. Due to the increasing number of members it became necessary to move several times. Lectures, concerts, even operas and balls were held in the rooms of the museum society.
Finally, from 1823 to 1826, the Museum Society erected a representative late classical building in Münstergasse on the site of the former Citizens' Hospital of the Holy Spirit, which was built in the late Gothic style. The striking building - the museum - had one of the most beautiful concert halls in Freiburg, often used for large and small concerts and conferences. Until it was destroyed in the bombing of Freiburg in 1944, it was a focal point of social life in the city, simply because of the popular Café Museum.
After the war, the museum society moved into smaller rooms in the waterway.
literature
- Klaus-Werner Benz , Ulrich Dold , Peter Kalchthaler [Eds.]: 200 years of civil culture, The Freiburg i. Br. EV , an anniversary volume, Verlag Herder Freiburg im Breisgau 2006 ISBN 978-3-451-24391-2
Web links
Coordinates: 47 ° 59 ′ 51.6 ″ N , 7 ° 51 ′ 1.5 ″ E