Exhibition projects

The Research Department regularly organises conferences, workshops and lectures on various topics and participates in international conferences.

Models, experiments, manual skills and useful knowledge: These were the basic ingredients with which the educators and theologians August Hermann Francke and Christoph Semler founded pioneering schools in Halle around 1700, in which not only the intellect but also the senses of the children were comprehensively addressed. Visualization became the linchpin here, so to speak, in order to make the growing natural history and technical knowledge of the time »comprehensible« in the truest sense of the word by means of real things in a way that was true to life, enjoyable and to the glory of God. A pioneering idea that gave rise to a completely new type of school: the »Realschule«.

The exhibition, jointly developed by the Francke Foundations' Research Department and Custody Department, is dedicated to this early modern »STEM initiative« and also looks at our present day from a historical perspective: what is clarity, how does it come about and is it perhaps more important today than ever? Can nature and technology - in the face of increasingly complex knowledge, encapsulated smart devices and new virtual worlds - still be conveyed vividly at all?

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