Gleimhaus, Literary museum in Halberstadt, Germany
The Gleimhaus is a half-timbered house behind the choir of Halberstadt Cathedral, converted in 1862 into a museum of the German Enlightenment. Its rooms display about 130 portrait paintings of 18th-century writers, a library of some 12,000 volumes and a manuscript collection of around 10,000 letters.
Gleim moved to Halberstadt in 1747 to serve as Domsekretär, administrator of the cathedral chapter, and lived in this half-timbered house near the cathedral choir. After his death in 1803, his grandnephew Wilhelm Körte kept the collections, which were later stored in the Domgymnasium. In 1861 the Gleim family foundation bought the house and opened it in 1862 as the Gleimhaus, one of Germany's oldest literary museums.
The so-called Temple of Friendship displays over 130 portraits from the 18th and early 19th centuries depicting writers and artists of that era. These paintings give visitors a direct sense of who shaped the literary world at that time and what these people looked like.
The half-timbered house stands just northeast of the Gothic cathedral choir, a short walk from Halberstadt's centre. Inside, the portrait collection and the letter archive can be searched on the museum's website, so specific names can be looked up before or after the visit.
Among the manuscripts are remnants of wallpaper from Gleim's garden house, on which his friends wrote notes by hand. The collection also holds over 1,000 manuscripts, including partial estates of Anna Louisa Karsch and Ewald von Kleist.
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