Research on the Cabinet of Artefacts and Natural Curiosities of the Francke Foundations

Auch heute noch begeistert das Kunst- und Naturalienkabinett Besucher:innen jeden Alters. Als einziges vollständig erhaltenes barockes Kuriositätenkabinett Deutschlands verkörpert es das originale Museumskonzept des 18. Jahrhunderts. Die einzigartige Verbindung von Kunst und Natur im Kabinett wirft bis heute zentrale Fragen der Wissensgeschichte auf. Die interdisziplinäre Erforschung dieses Erbes bleibt daher ein zentrales Anliegen der modernen Geistes- und Naturwissenschaften.

Since its reconstruction and reopening in 1995, knowledge about the objects and concepts of Halle's Cabinet of Artefacts and Natural Curiosities has been compiled and published in many different academic contexts. Nevertheless, the paradoxical realisation is that there has not yet been a conference that addresses the chamber in a thematically comprehensive and systematic manner, presents existing knowledge, formulates new insights and theses and thus asks about the future of the chamber. This is because the collection continues to harbour a multitude of unresolved questions and contexts – and time and again it proves itself capable of discussing current issues in an astonishing way on the basis of its objects and presentations. To accompany the annual exhibition, scientists from various disciplines are now meeting for the first time to jointly develop perspectives for further research.

The transformation from the purposefully and playfully disordered Cabinet of Artefacts to the orderly Enlightenment museum is well known. What has not yet been fully explored is the process by which this transformation took place. This two-day workshop will explore the role of learned societies in this transformation between England and the German-speaking countries, focusing on the relatively under-researched period from the founding of the Leopoldina as a medical association (1652) to the beginning of the presidency of the Royal Society under Joseph Banks (1778). The aim is to investigate why physicians in both regions seemed to play such a crucial role in collecting as well as connoisseurship. Did the physicians of the Leopoldina, the Society of Antiquaries in London and the Royal Society have similar collecting practices, strategies and reasons for collecting? What contribution did they make to the creation of Cabinets of Curiosities and early museums, and to the development of norms of connoisseurship and the classification of knowledge?

This workshop was part of a networking grant award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC): Collective Wisdom: Collecting in the Early Modern Academy.  (Principal Investigator: Anna Marie Roos (University of Lincoln), Co-Investigator: Vera Keller (University of Oregon)).

Organisation and Chair:
Rainer Godel (Study Centre of the Leopoldina - Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften)
Holger Zaunstöck (Research Centre - Francke Foundations)

Since the 1990s, the Cabinets of Artefacts and Natural Curiosities and special collections that emerged in the early modern period at princely courts, in the bourgeois context and in connection with academies, learned societies and also schools have been examined with a range of research approaches that is now widely differentiated in terms of method and subject matter. In addition to the highlights of the collections, there has been a hitherto hardly overlooked multitude of collections that existed only temporarily, that were less extensive or that can be assigned to specific contexts of use or persons. A project oriented towards basic research in this regard is a desideratum. Against the background of current research projects on concrete case studies from this multitude of collections and collection types, a working discussion on 14 June 2017 asked about their topographies, networks and publics.

The Cabinet of Artefacts and Natural Curiosities of the Francke Foundations in Halle occupies a prominent place in the history of museums in Europe. It represents a lost culture of collecting and display in the pre-modern era. The chamber in the mansard roof of the Historical Orphanage visualised God's creation captured in a macrocosm-in-microcosm model. It is thus one of the exceedingly rare examples of the preservation of a Cabinet of Artefacts and Natural Curiosities from the early modern period in terms of the spatial setting, the objects, the furnishings and the original concept of the arrangement of the collection. But the question is: why is this so?

Holger Zaunstöck: „Seit Jahrzehnten tot und der Vergessenheit anheimgefallen“? Überlieferungsbedingungen für die Kunst- und Naturalienkammer in der Schulstadt Franckesche Stiftungen. In: Jan Brademann/Gerrit Deutschländer/Matthias Meinhardt (Hg.): Sammeln und Zerstreuen. Bedingungen historischer Überlieferung in Sachsen-Anhalt. Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag 2021 (Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte Sachsen-Anhalts 21), S. 171–206.

Three hundred years ago, the Halle Orphanage was already bustling with visitors. The deliberate opening of the Cabinet of Artefacts and Natural Curiosities and the school town to the public met with broad interest from all classes and at the same time also led to considerable problems in everyday life. The guides complained of overwork and disorder. Students made trouble and did not want to obey the rules. That is why the Francke Foundations were already working on measures for regulated visitor traffic at the beginning of the 18th century.

Holger Zaunstöck: Museum Audiences in the Early Modern Period – Visiting the Halle Orphanage and its Collections. In: Кунсткамера │ Kunstkamera, St. Petersburg, Issue 4 (10) 2020, p. 32–48.