»God have mercy on the battered Bohemians«

2022 marks the three hundredth anniversary of the printing of the Bohemian Bible in Halle. August Hermann Francke's concern was to strengthen the oppressed Lutherans in Bohemia, Moravia, parts of Hungary and Silesia and to support the Protestant brothers in faith in exile who had been driven from their homeland. Above all, he wanted to provide the exiles with books in their mother tongue. Under Francke's employee Heinrich Milde (1676-1739), Halle developed into an important printing centre for Czech-language religious literature. The highlight of the publishing activity was the publication of the Czech Bible, copies of which were secretly distributed in Bohemia and Moravia and reached as far as the Baltic States and Russia.

The exhibition in the former Rading Room of the Historic Library provides an insight into the relations of the Halle Orphanage with the Bohemian religious minorities and presents examples of the prints intended for them.