Marktkirche & Marienbibliothek in Halle (Saale)
By Stefan Laube
Collections in Protestant Churches – a Mésalliance?
Qualities such as “clean”, “clearly arranged”, and “sparsely furnished” jump to the eye when a visitor enters a Protestant church room from the early modern period: Just behind the entrance in front – often on a gallery – the organ , at the back the altar and to the side a pulpit visible from all sides, plus accurately arranged seating, often marked with the names of the town´s distinguished families. But collections? An assemblage of objects has never really been at home in Protestant church rooms. The only thing that gathered here was the congregation to listen to the Word of God in this place. Talking, listening and reading rose to become the central forms of perception within the church in the founding phase of the Reformation, whereas looking and touching were discouraged, or in Martin Luther´s words. “To us Christ's kingdom is a hearing kingdom, not a seeing kingdom” [1]. Although in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Protestant congregations mostly used the same churches for their worship that had previously served the Old Believers, these were rapidly transformed into auditoriums of Christian edification; the worship space became the preaching space, at the centre of which was no longer the altar but the pulpit. Collections would only have counteracted such a spatial concept. Certainly, exceptions could be made, for example in the case of medieval cathedral churches, such as those in Halberstadt, Quedlinburg, Naumburg, Merseburg and Strasbourg, which were temporarily, partially or even completely used by Protestants and whose treasure collections continued to be maintained. Nor was it impossible that Protestant church interiors provided a housing for many an oddity or memorabilia, especially as no new buildings were erected until well into the seventeenth century, but old church interiors continued to be used. Nevertheless, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the trend of spatial diversification is unmistakable, and newly acquired rarities found now and then their place in the church interior [2]. With the establishment of early modern states, a division of functions gradually became established. Collection items such as archives, books and Kunstkammer objects tended to be separated from one another and transferred to their own departments and institutions.
It was quite different before the Reformation break, when the church still saw itself as a sacred place, where the bones of a martyr had a miracle-working power, and where all sorts of votives were deposited at altars dedicated to a certain holy intercessor to counter dangers and risks. At the same time, the sacredly charged church space could go hand in hand with phases of secularization – be it that the church was turned into a place of masquerades, debauched celebrations, hierarchies turned upside down, or be it that city dwellers converted the church space into a market hall. It was not until the Reformation that it seems to have been possible for the first time to subject the space to systematic uniformity, in which it was freed not only from excessive ecclesiastical festivities but also from the economic business of everyday life.
So there can hardly be any talk of “God's Collections” in Protestant church halls if this does not mean the “innere Sammlung” [inward gathering] of the worshippers to open themselves to the sermon. If there was one object of collection that was accepted in early Protestantism, it was the book, the good book of course – the book that consolidated the new faith. Thus, in the centre of Halle on the Saale, a library joined the market church from the middle of the sixteenth century, where, however, not only books but also curiosities were to be displayed.
A four-towered parish church with a library annexe
This library was located in the immediate vicinity of a town church, which still marks the silhouette of the town with its four towers.
Market Square with Market Church and Red Tower, Halle an der Saale, (photo: Holger Brülls, 1999).
Its unified inner space also set standards [3]. The art historian Max Sauerlandt described it as a “last and purest expression of the late Gothic” [4]. Why does the church have a tower at each of its four corners? The Marktkirche was created from a merger of two churches that stood close to each other. In 1529, both churches were demolished. Only the so-called “blue towers” of St. Gertruden from around 1400 remained on the west side and the “Hausmannstürme” of St. Marien on the east side. The new church was now clamped between the two pairs of towers. Although the three-nave hall church with its pulpit placed in the centre and surrounded by galleries was always perceived as a genuine Protestant preaching space, its concept dates back to pre-Reformation times.
Interior of the Marktkirche, view to the east (photo: Thorsten Albrecht, 2012).
The highly unusual process of merging two intact parishes and their parish churches took place under the decisive influence of the Archbishop of Magdeburg and city ruler of Halle, Albrecht of Brandenburg, who had chosen Halle as his residence in 1514. Cardinal Albrecht, Martin Luther´s opponent, has gone down in history as one of the greatest collectors of relics. Only a few hundred metres from the Marktkirche, which was under construction, Cardinal Albrecht presented magnificent reliquaries to a former Dominican church, in the Neue Stift, as part of the so-called Heiltumsweisungen – excesses of the traditional church that Protestantism sought to nip in the bud.
Hallesches Heiltumsbuch (1520), beginning of the third aisle with Mary's reliquary, Halle, Marienbibliothek, Hof 135 Q.
The Marktkirche has had a library, the Marienbibliothek, since the middle of the sixteenth century. Shortly after the introduction of the Reformation in Halle, it was founded in 1552 by Sebastian Boetius (1515–1573), then head pastor at the Church of Our Lady, and remained the only public library in Halle for almost 150 years until the foundation of Halle University in 1694. The Marienbibliothek is considered the oldest and largest Protestant church library in Germany that has been open to the public without interruption. When, after a few decades, the windowless room above the sacristy in the church could no longer accommodate any more books, Boetius’ successor, Johannes Olearius (1546–1623), who had been head pastor and superintendent since 1580, succeeded in having a library building built on the market square with the financial help of the Council. From then on, the library was administered by a librarian appointed by the church council. Old views show the three-storey Renaissance building next to the market church, which was begun in 1607 and completed in 1612, its steep gable roof with three dwarf houses facing the market square.
Old building of the Marienbibliothek, to the left of the Marktkirche and the “Roter Turm”, copperplate engraving by Johann Baptist Homann, c. 1724 (detail).
On the first floor, the library was housed in a vaulted hall, which could only be reached via the stairtower attached to the courtyard side. The core stock of books, the so-called “corpus”, stood on simple wooden shelves; the special collections in specially made latticed cabinets, on which a portrait commemorated the respective donor. An instruction regulated the use and opening hours of the library. The oldest surviving instruction from 1717 states that the library was open two days a week - on Tuesday and Thursday - from 2 to 4 pm.
Marienbibliothek (new building from 1888) in the courtyards of the parsonages (photo: Heinrich L. Nickel, 2002)
Today, the library is housed in a bright clinker brick building, which was erected together with the three new parsonages in 1887/88. Particularly modern at the time was the self-supporting shelving system extends over three mezzanines. It was laid out in a space-saving manner with cast-iron supports and iron grates as floors and ceilings according to the new and modern French storage system of the time.
Marienbibliothek today, view into the stacks (photo: Heinrich L. Nickel, 2002).
Today, the Marienbibliothek, a church library, is a scientific library with an old collection that can only be consulted on site (reference library). It contains about 30,000 volumes, mainly from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. Among them are over 435 incunabulae, 308 manuscripts and 229 documents from the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries.
Biblia in German. Wittenberg: Hans Lufft 1541. Opened: inside of the front cover. Glued into this Bible is a full-page autograph of Martin Luther. It is a dedication by Luther for the Bible of the von Selmenitz family in 1543. Halle, Marienbibliothek, B 1.20.
Book printing as the greatest gift of God
Along with gunpowder and the compass, printing was regarded as the sign of a new era. Martin Luther recognised printing as the “greatest gift from God” [5]. The intellectual awakening of the time also included thinking about the necessity, tasks and functions of libraries. In the well-known missive of 1524 To the rulers of all the towns of the German land that they should establish and maintain Christian schools, Martin Luther combined the call for an educational reform oriented towards the principles of the new Protestant movement with the establishment of libraries by the municipal authorities [6].
Martin Luther: An die Radherrn aller stedte deutsches lands: das sie Christliche schulen auffrichten vnd hallten sollen, title woodcut by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Halle, Franckesche Stiftungen, FS 49 A 14 (1).
Helmut Zedelmaier has pointed out that Luther´s outline of the history of the library engages with aspects that are still effective today when talking about libraries. Libraries preserve and safeguard the transmission of written works. They serve as institutionalised collective memory, and characterise what since the eighteenth century has been education, culture and civilisation, but with Luther under “gospel”. Luther’s library idea has a biblical framework. As his historical sketch makes clear, he was concerned with the preservation of the Bible and those instruments that guarantee the correct interpretation of the sacred text. Luther’s library is a select library, a canon of knowledge important for the certainty of faith. Only “good” and “righteous” books are to be included in libraries. Luther’s call to build libraries is thus by no means an expression of bibliophilia and a desire to collect, but a means of asserting the new Protestant doctrine, which sees itself surrounded by the hostile written works of the Papists.
Two texts printed in Halle document how Luther’s “Ratsherrnschrift” influenced the history of the Marienbibliothek: a Latin translation of an excerpt of Luther’s writing printed in 1608 and a speech on libraries published in 1615. The editor of the Latin translation as well as the author of the library speech was Johann Olearius [7], who has already been mentioned.
Title page from: Johann Olearius: Oratio De Bibliothecis, Halle: Christoph Bismarck, 1615. Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Ao 158.
For Olearius, as for Luther, a good library does not result from the multitude of books acquired with a curious desire to collect, but rather from the selection made according to usefulness and use. And libraries, for Olearius as for Luther, are places of truth, shelters that protect the Gospel primarily against Catholic, but now for Olearius also against Reformed teachings. But there is a change in the way libraries are viewed one hundred years after the Reformation began. Olearius does not want to simply exclude bad books from the library. According to Olearius, a fair evaluation can only be made on the basis of one's own experience. That's why access to alternative books that challenge one's own view is also necessary, he says.
Koran, probably 16th century, waxed paper, ornamental decoration with rich gilding. Halle, Marienbibliothek, Ms 35.
He believed that Scripture, the principle of “sola scriptura”, had so much objectifying power and strength that the most diverse positions could be developed: the library as a place of truth where controversies are settled. The speech De Bibliothecis provided the blueprint for the professional expansion of the Marienbibliothek, as can be observed since Olearius took office. Whether it be herbal books, astrological-astronomical writings, calendars and prognostics, devil's book literature and travel literature: the Marienbibliothek with its spectrum of bibliophilic collection areas seems almost like a universal library.
Library as a cabinet of rarities
Probably from the very beginning, the collecting activity in the Marienbibliothek in Halle also extended to curious things. This was anything but unusual at the time. In the early modern period, libraries always saw themselves as repositories for material witnesses that today one would rather expect to find in a museum. There was hardly a library that did not store and exhibit curious things at the same time. Reading and looking at things – whether to acquire knowledge or to pass the time – complemented each other in the early modern period. The Royal Library in Hanover, for example, attracted visitors not only with a chair on which Leibniz had sat, but also with one of Luther’s spoons [8]. The Abbey Library of St. Gall presented the Egyptian mummy of Schepenese with its two sarcophagi between shelves of books [9]. In the Zurich City Library, a crocodile hung from the ceiling [10].
Clasp shoe from the 16th century, since the 18th century “shoe of Melanchthon”, Halle, Marktbibliothek.
The Marienbibliothek, which also arose from Protestant impulses, exhibited, among numerous other curiosities, for example, a shoe attributed to Melanchthon (1497–1560) and – as a very special attraction – Martin Luther as a theatrically staged wax figure [11]. A first list of the curiosities kept in the Marienbibliothek can be found in a Hallensian chronicle published in the middle of the eighteenth century [12]. It also mentions Melanchthon´s pewter table pot, a Turkish “woman's shoe”, “urns of death” found in the Mansfeld region, Roman and Greek coins etc. But astronomical instruments like the celestial globe by Willem Janszoon Blaeu also found their way into the library. The chronicler from Halle praised Johann Caesar (c. 1612–1690), the most important librarian of the Marienbibliothek in the 17th century, as a “famous astronomer”.
At that time, the division of public functions had not yet progressed so far that the library and the cabinet of rarities were divorced from each other; rather, they often belonged together. Not infrequently they were housed in one and the same room. Powerful royal houses could afford to house the Kunst- und Wunderkammer in one room and an encyclopaedically oriented library in another. The two rooms were often connected or not far apart. But there were also libraries that always kept and exhibited curious things at the same time as an addition [13].
Luther´s death mask
A photo from 1885 shows the front of the old library building between the Händel monument and the Marktkirche few years before demolition. Behind it at the central window of the first floor was something peculiar: a life-size Luther-figure, which was arranged sitting on a chair
The Marienbibliothek in Halle (Saale) from 1609 to 1889; in the foreground the Händel monument (photo: Sophus Williams, 1885, detail).
in front of a table using his surviving death mask and the mould of his hands – dressed in a gown and beret [14]. On the table was a Bible donated by Luther to the church with his own handwritten dedication. From the middle of the seventeenth century until the twentieth century – the sources are silent about the exact dates – one could admire this unique attraction. The fact that the archives are silent both about the installation of the guard portrait in the 17th century and about its dismantling in the twentieth century may be an indication of how ambivalent the Protestant Church was towards this object.
Luther as a theatrical wax figure, Halle, Marienbibliothek (photo Möller, 1915),
On the one hand, there was an antiquarian and museum interest in preserving a portrait of Luther that was considered authentic; on the other hand, its staging was reminiscent of statues of saints and votives, from which one usually sharply distinguished oneself. It would have been unacceptable to display such a thing in a church. In a library, on the other hand, why not exhibit Luther´s waxy body parts in the appropriate setting of a scholar [15]?!.
Ever since the death mask was exhibited, its authenticity has been doubted. For one thing, its facial expression seemed too far removed from the Luther’s facial expression in Cranach’s portraits. Luther had passed away in Eisleben on 18 February 1546. When the sarcophagus was brought to Wittenberg, where he had lived for many decades, the funeral procession also stopped in Halle. There is no doubt that portraits were made of Luther as he lay in state – not least to document or confirm Luther’s peaceful death. While the death drawing by Lukas Furtennagel from 1546, which shows him with closed eyes, shows his typical facial expression, the death mask clearly conveys a rather alien face.
Portrait of the dead Luther, Lukas Furtennagel, pen and brown ink, 1546, Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett.
Death mask of Martin Luther, frontal view (photo: Uta Tintemann, 2012).
Since none of the otherwise richly gushing sources mention the making of a mask, there is much to suggest that Luther’s death mask is not an original, but was made later, probably in the middle of the Thirty Years’ War. Against this background, the picturesque embedding of waxen hands and waxen face by a gown, table and a Bible with an original autograph has one function above all: it served a compensatory suggestion of authenticity that the wax mask alone must have lacked. So even if Luther´s death mask is probably not genuine, this does not change the fact that for three centuries it fulfilled a need to enhance Luther’s authenticity.
The Luther figure in the market library must have radiated a morbid charm. Its core consisted of a death mask, which draws its fascination not least from the direct, physical contact with the deceased. Luther´s death mask – according to the conviction of the time – must also have had haptic contact, otherwise the individual facial features of the reformer could not have been drawn directly a few hours after his death. Not at all very much in contrast with the damned cult of relics of the ancient church , the death mask is a document that the deceased actually lived. At the same time, it can serve as a medium of revitalisation. Parallels to the book, which also has sacral-morbid potential, suggest themselves. Every book that is opened and read develops into a medium of spirit conversations. In the imagination of the survivors, the long-dead are given a voice again.
Today, such associations have completely disappeared. Until recently, the mask with the hands was displayed like amputated body parts in a large showcase in an adjoining room of the Marktkirche.
Presentation of the wax casts of Martin Luther in a side room of the Marktkirche in Halle (photo: Stefan Laube, 2016).
The Marktkirche is currently being rebuilt, and this side room will make way for a new toilet facility. And the wax Luther relics? At the moment it seems they will disappear again into a sacristy cupboard and will only be shown on request [16]. To this day, it seems that people in Halle have a hard time with this object.
The ensemble of the Marktkirche and the Marienbibliothek unites the spirituality and educational ideas of the Reformation. While church services were held in the church interior with a measured, low-image décor, the collecting activities shifted to the Marienbibliothek in the immediate vicinity, where not only books as a storage medium for the printed word were gathered, but also a respectable ensemble of rare objects. The break with tradition that accompanied the Reformation was linked to the construction of new origin stories, which were printed in newly published books and which additionally required the object’s vividness and authenticity for authentication. Collective memory drew from materiality, from entities that could be collected and displayed, be they books or things.
Notes
[1] „Uns ist Christi Reich ein hör Reich, nicht eine sehe Reich.“Martin Luther: Predigt (1545), in Merseburg gehalten, „Von dem Reich Christi aus dem achten Psalmen“; WA [Weimarer Ausgabe], vol. 51, p.11.
[2] When Duke Heinrich Julius commissioned the construction of a main church, Beatae Mariae Virginis, in Wolfenbüttel, at the beginning of the 17th century, not only did the first large Protestant church take shape between 1608 and 1624, but at the same time an interior decoration became reality that cannot be described as anything other than orderly.
[3] Its semantics are shaped by the inscriptions on the galleries in commemoration of the Reformation, i.e. by the visualised word written in the room.
[4] Max Sauerlandt: Halle a.S.(Stätten der Kultur 30), Leipzig 1913, quoted from Ranft (2013), p. 12.
[5] According to the “Tischreden” Luthers considers book print as “summum et postremum donum [dei]” WA, Tr, 2,65,17-19.
[6] The missive met with a broad response. The small text, first printed in Wittenberg in 1524, was reprinted in the same year in many German cities, in Erfurt, Jena, Mainz, Constance, Strasbourg, Nuremberg, Augsburg, and again in the 17th century.
[7] Olearius is regarded as a representative of Lutheran orthodoxy, which he managed to implement in Halle with great energy. In his function as head pastor, he presided over the Marienbibliothek. It was only through his initiative that the Marienbibliothek became a library with its own building.
[8] Johann Adam Christian Thon: Ueber Reliquien - ein Auszug aus dem Lateinischen des Herrn Hofrats [Johann Heinrich] Jung, Hannover: Schmidt, 1784, p. 24.
[9] Huber (2007), p. 56f.
[10] The citizens' library, founded in 1629, was housed in the Wasserkirche from 1634. Attached to the library was a rare book department.
[11] Laube (2016).
[12] Johann Christoph Dreyhaupt: Pagus neletici et nudzici oder ausführliche diplomatisch-historische Beschreibung des zum ehemaligen Primat und Ertz-Stifft nunmehr aber durch den westphälischen Friedens-Schluss secularisirten Herzogthum Magdeburg gehörigen Saal-Kreyses und aller dar darin befindlichen Städte, Schlösser [...], vol. 2, Halle (Saale) 1755, p. 219
[13] Gabriel Naudé: Anleitung zur Einrichtung einer Bibliothek [Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque, Paris 1627], translation Heinz Steudtner. Berlin 1978, p 90f. Naudé later had ample opportunity to apply his theoretical knowledge as librarian to Jules Mazarin (1602-1661) in Paris.
[14] Terminus ante quem is the year 1663, when a craftsman named Lucas Schöne was commissioned to "make" or "repair" a Luther figure using the mask and the hand casts; see Kornmeier (2003), p. 346f.
[15] The use of wax death masks for portrait sculptures was not uncommon in the Baroque period. For example, the Swedish King Gustav Adolf, who fell in the Thirty Years’ War against the Catholics, was exhibited several times as a wax figure in the mid-17th century; Walter Stengel (1969). Zeitvertreib. Zehn Kapitel Berliner Kulturgeschichte, Berlin, p. 55.
[16] Communication not without regret from Anke Fiebiger, the director of the Marienbibliothek, in her email of 19 April 2022.
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