In the quarry of time. Earth histories and the beginnings of geology

Photos by the Canadian Edward Burtynsky, sounds by Dominik Eulberg and more than 250 rarely shown objects from unique collections invite you on an exciting journey through the discovery of the Earth Age with a view into the present.

In our annual exhibition, we present one of the great events of the early modern era: the discovery of the Earth's time. For this, the curators put the magnifying glass on the Halle educational cosmos of the 18th century with the pietistic Orphanage and the Brandenburg-Prussian Friedrichs-University. This center of the Early Enlightenment is located in the middle between the geologically most diverse low mountain range in Germany, the Harz Mountains, and the Bergakademie in Freiberg (founded in 1765 as the fifth in the series of worldwide educational institutions for mining science).

The exhibition designers from the Formikat agency have created an emotional and excitingly staged exhibition tour from the prehistory of geology to the emergence of modern geosciences in the 19th century with an excursion to the present day that focuses on sensual and emotional experience.  Texts about the objects are only available in the free booklet accompanying the tour. »We were particularly interested in what motivated people to engage with inanimate nature,« says Dr. Claus Veltmann, curator of the exhibition and curator of the exhibition with Tom Gärtig, explaining this exhibition approach. In return, they were able to work with the unique estate of the geological autodidact Christian Keferstein (1784-1866), who went down in history as the creator of the first geological map of Germany. 300 geological maps, almost 600 letters and a specialist library comprising 2000 volumes make up the collection, which is now kept in the archive and library of the Francke Foundations.

The annual exhibition leads vividly through seemingly contradictory theories of the origin of the earth, through scholarly disputes, economic interests and the loss of the primacy of the Bible, to a look into the abyss of the geological era. Alchemists who sought the pure, physico-theologians who wanted to discover the perfection of creation, cameralists who fought for the utilization of resources, university professors and scientifically highly educated dilettantes and collectors, networked in a worldwide community of scholars, all of them, as Neptunists, volcanists, catastrophists or actualists, strive to gain a scientifically founded idea of the history and geological structure of the earth. The exhibition does not leave without a scientifically founded view of the Anthropocene, in which for the first time mankind radically changed the geological formation of the earth. Films by Murat Haschu and sounds by Dominik Eulberg, the »Nature DJ from the Westerwald« (ARD), allow visitors to immerse themselves in the earth's history. The photographs of the Canadian Edward Burtynsky make us think. With his works on industrial landscapes, he documents how the environment is changed by unbridled globalized financial and economic interests. The exhibition tour ends with a selection of his impressive photographs of mines and open-cast mines around the world.

You can also take a tour of the online exhibition from the comfort of your own home.