If you want to 'look the 18th century in the face', then take a look at Gleim's "Temple of Friendship". Around 120 portraits of poets, statesmen and scholars cover the walls, including Lessing, Herder, Klopstock, Winckelmann and Anna Louisa Karsch.
After moving from Berlin to Halberstadt in 1747, Gleim began to have the friends he had left behind painted. The creation of the gallery was thus an expression of a new sense of friendship in the 18th century. In later times, the circle of those depicted expanded more and more beyond Gleim's personal friends to include deserving personalities of the time. In keeping with this new concept, Gleim noted on the back of many pictures what the merit was in each case.
The culture of portraiture was in full bloom in the 18th century. However, none of his contemporaries was as persistent as Gleim in collecting portraits of his friends. His so-called "Temple of Friendship" is the most extensive portrait gallery of great minds and beautiful souls of the Age of Enlightenment. It is also the only collection preserved in its historical location whose unifying element is friendship. The gallery presents a panorama of the literary world of the Enlightenment in Germany as well as the portrait art of the time. Important portraitists such as Anton Graff and some members of the Tischbein family of painters worked for Gleim.
The collection can be researched at museum-digital.
With the exception of the portrait painting collection, the library and the manuscript archive, the majority of Gleim's estate was sold at several auctions, including his collection of prints. Since the opening of the Gleimhaus as a literary museum in 1862, a new collection of drawings and prints has been built up, into which a few sheets from Gleim's estate have found their way. Portraits of poets, artists and scholars were a focal point from the very beginning. At the end of the 19th century, the collection of portraits by the Halberstadt cathedral preacher Christian Friedrich Bernhard Augustin (1771-1856) also found its way into the museum, a collection of Halberstadt personalities, which also included individual sheets from Gleim's estate, as well as those from the estate of Augustin's father-in-law Gottlob Nathanael Fischer (1748-1800). Many of the sheets from the Augustin Collection are labelled with biographical information as well as autographs of the personalities depicted. They are still organised according to the traditional principle of class and profession.
The collection of prints includes large groups of works by the Halberstadt-born graphic artist Ludwig Buchhorn (1770-1856) and the portraitist Georg Friedrich Adolph Schöner (1774-1841), who lived in Halberstadt for a long time.
With the exception of recent sheets and duplicates, the portrait prints in the Gleimhaus are fully integrated into the "Digital Portrait Index of Early Modern Prints".
A broad selection of the print collection is presented at museum-digital.
In addition to the portrait painting collection and the graphic art collection, the Gleimhaus has built up a collection of other artefacts, some of which are or have been returned from Gleim's estate. Outstanding works include the statue of Anna Louisa Karsch, Gleim's writing chair, a memorial ring to Frederick II and a pair of memorial pictures to Ewald Christian von Kleist by Adam Friedrich Oeser.
The collection can be researched at museum-digital.
In addition to Gleim's collections, the Gleimhaus preserves a number of estates or parts of estates or fragments of estates of some artists from the region.
This collection comprises the following sub-collections:
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Gleimhaus
Museum of the German Enlightenment
Domplatz 31
38820 Halberstadt
Tel: 03941 6871-0
E-mail: gleimhaus@halberstadt.de
