Wilhelm Friedemann Bach House

In the Wilhelm Friedemann Bach House in Halle (Saale) - a home of the composer Wilhelm Friedemann Bach - the Handel House Foundation has been presenting the exhibition "Halle City of Music" since May 30, 2012, which explores the musical history of the city on the Saale using nationally important personalities of the musical life in Halle.

The building at Große Klausstraße 12

The then Große Klausstraße 18 around 1900, photo: Gottfried Riehm

Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, who worked as music director and organist at the Marktkirche Our Dear Women from 1746 to 1764 , moved in 1762 or 1763 from his first verifiable apartment in Grosse Nikolaistraße to a “Quartier der Clausbadstube”. This bathhouse, built in 1554, including the house, courtyard and garden, was located on the corner plot of today's Große Klausstraße 12. Until the middle of the 18th century, the property was owned by the Bader Guild . A representation of the house from the 18th century is not known and it is also not known in which part of the building Bach's apartment was located, and the location of the bathing room can no longer be precisely determined.

From the half- timbered corner plot in the middle of the 16th century, only the wing of the house facing Große Klausstraße with cellar, ground floor and first floor with plank room is preserved today. The part facing the Saale was demolished in 1834 because it was dilapidated and a new building was erected along today's Hallorenring. With the start of house numbering within the individual streets in 1855, the property with the number 883 was given the name Große Klausstrasse 18, and it was not until the mid-1980s that it changed to number 12. Further renovations followed in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1874 , a second floor was built on the old part of the house, the Renaissance wing on Große Klausstraße, which significantly changed the character of the house. The old steep roof with dormer and skylight was retained.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the corner house housed, among other things, a grocery store, a pub, a cleaning shop, a barber shop as well as the “Zum golden Hahn” inn. No further investments were made between the 1940s and 1980s, so that there was a high need for renovation in the mid-1980s. From 1987 to 1989 the first fundamental renovation took place, including the roof and the wooden gallery at the back. In the years 2009 to 2012, the listed renovation was carried out by Hallesche Wohnungsgesellschaft mbh (HWG), which owns the house.

Exhibitions

Showroom

In the exhibition “Musikstadt Halle” on the first floor, seven composers from the 16th to 19th centuries are honored in individual exhibition rooms: Samuel Scheidt , Georg Friedrich Händel , Johann Sebastian and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach , Johann Friedrich Reichardt , Carl Loewe and Robert Franz . For reasons of space, the 20th century had to be disregarded.

The exhibition " House Music Hall" with the presentation of historical musical instruments of the 18th and 19th centuries, the reconstructed Bohlenstube from the 16th century as well as the Salon Robert Franz, which is used for events, complement the offered services. Another room on the ground floor is dedicated to the building history of the house.

Others

The Wilhelm-Friedemann-Bach-Haus is the seat of the State Music Council Saxony-Anhalt eV and Mitteldeutsche Barockmusik eV

literature

Konstanze Musketa / Christiane Barth: Halle City of Music - Guide to the exhibition in the Wilhelm-Friedemann-Bach-Haus Halle , Handelhaus Foundation 2012, ISBN 978-3-943095-01-2 , 64 pp.
Christine and Rüdiger Just: Between the Baderei and the trading house. On the history of Grosse Klausstraße 12 , in: Yearbook for Hall's City History 2011 , Janos Stekovics Verlag , Dößel 2011, ISBN 978-3-89923-286-8 , pp. 159–174.

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm-Friedemann-Bach-Haus (Halle) - Collection of images, videos and audio files

51.483015 11.965042Coordinates: 51 ° 28 '58.9 " N , 11 ° 57' 54.2" E