The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (German: Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina – Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften), short Leopoldina, is the national academy of Germany, and is located in Halle (Saale). Founded on January 1, 1652, based on academic models in Italy, it was originally named the Academia Naturae Curiosorum until 1687 when Emperor Leopold I raised it to an academy and named it after himself. It was since known under the German name Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina until 2007, when it was declared to be Germany’s National Academy of Sciences. The Leopoldina has a claim to be the oldest continuously existing learned society in the world. The validity of the claim depends in part on how certain definitional and historical questions are answered. read more…
The synagogue of Halle (Saale) is the house of worship of the Jewish community in Halle (Saale), which had 555 members in 2018. The building was originally built in 1894 as the Tahara House of the Jewish cemetery, laid out in 1864 northeast of downtown Halle, from white and yellow bricks according to plans by the architects Gustav Wolff and Theodor Lehmann. The conversion to a synagogue took place from 1948 after some renovations (consecrated in 1953) as a replacement for the old synagogue in the city center, which was destroyed during the November pogroms in 1938. read more…
The Stadt- und Pfarrkirche St. Marien zu Wittenberg (Town and Parish Church of St. Mary’s) is the civic church of the German town of Lutherstadt Wittenberg. The reformers Martin Luther and Johannes Bugenhagen preached there and the building also saw the first celebration of the mass in German rather than Latin and the first ever distribution of the bread and wine to the congregation – it is thus considered the mother-church of the Protestant Reformation. Since 1996 it has been a World Heritage Site – it, the Castle Church of All Saints (Schlosskirche), the Lutherhaus, the Melanchthonhaus and the surrounding Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm form the world’s densest concentration of World Heritage Sites in one area. read more…
Barby is a town in the Salzlandkreis district, in Saxony-Anhalt. It is situated on the left bank of the Elbe river, near the confluence with the Saale, approx. 25 km (16 mi) southeast of Magdeburg. Since an administrative reform of 1 January 2010 it comprises the former municipalities of the administrative community Elbe-Saale, except for Gnadau, that joined Barby in September 2010. The burgward of Barby was first mentioned in a 961 deed by German king Otto I. Since the 12th century, the area was enfeoffed to the Counts of Barby descending from nearby Arnstein, who achieved Imperial immediacy in 1497. Upon the extinction of the line in 1659, the County of Barby fell to the Duchy of Saxe-Weissenfels, ruled by a cadet branch of the electoral Saxon House of Wettin. read more…
Bernburg is a town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, capital of the district of Salzlandkreis. It is situated on the river Saale, approx. 30 km downstream from Halle. The town is dominated by its huge Renaissance castle featuring a museum as well as a popular, recently updated bear pit in its moat. read more…
Bitterfeld-Wolfen is a town in the district Anhalt-Bitterfeld, Saxony-Anhalt. It is situated in south-eastern Saxony-Anhalt, west of the river Mulde, in an area that is dominated by heavy industry and lignite mining. The town was formed by merger of the towns Bitterfeld and Wolfen and the municipalities Greppin, Holzweißig and Thalheim on 1 July 2007. read more…
Staatliches Bauhaus, commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was an art school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term Bauhaus – literally “house of construction” – was understood as meaning “School of Building”. read more…
