BACH HOUSE MUSIC MUSEUM - EISENACH
Not Quite the Birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach
The Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach in Thuringia Germany on March 21, 1685. Exactly where is not certain. The Bach family was rather prominent in Eisenach and associated with a few buildings still standing. His father, Johann Ambrosius Bach was the town’s musical director and several uncles were musicians, there.
In May of 1907, a house that had been mistakenly identified as his birth house became available and was acquired by the New Bach Society opened as the world’s first museum dedicated to the composer and famous home town boy. They were a little disappointed to discover that it couldn’t be proven he was born there, but another house nearby which no longer exists. Today, the Bachhaus Museum in Eisenach is one of the largest Baroque era music museums in Germany.
The cities of Leipzig where Bach was cantor and choral master and Weimar where he built his reputation and most of his own children were born, are more associated with Bach’s composing career, but he lived the first ten years of his life in Eisenach, taking his first music lessons there and singing in the choir of St George’s Church, where his uncle, Johann Christophe Bach, was church organist.
The young Johann Sebastian was baptized in the St George’s Church where St. Elizabeth of Hungary (and Thuringia) was married to Ludwig IV, the lord of Wartburg Castle, the Patron saint of bread bakers, beggars and brides, sanctified for her charity works, and where the Protestant reformer Martin Luther had also sung in his boyhood in Eisenach over a century earlier (Martin Luther at Wartburg 500th). Bach as a boy attended the same Latin School in Eisenach as Martin Luther.
Bach’s father, Johann Ambrosius, had moved to Eisenach in 1671, where he found employment as court trumpeter and was appointed director of the town musicians. He had rented apartments in a house behind the current Bach House at Rittergasse 11, but later bought a house in Fleischgasse street about 100 paces to the north, but which is no longer standing. The Bach House was actually owned at the time by the master of the Latin School, Heinrich Börstelmann, and Bach may have visited as a student. Only later did members of the Bach family live there.
Ambrosius Bach had eight children with his first wife, Maria Elisabeth, whom he had married in 1668, and four of them became musicians, including Johann Sebastian. One of his uncles, Johann Ludwig Bach, was a well-known violinist and composer. His mother and father both died in the same year when the young Sebastian was 10 in 1694, and he left Eisenach to live with his oldest brother, with same name as his uncle, Johann Christoph, in Ohrdruf, Gotha Saxe-Coburg where he was organist at the St Michael’s Church, and continued his music education by hand copying his brother’s compositions.
A Museum Founded
Bach had fallen out of favor in 18th Century as “old fashioned”, but with a renaissance of interest fueled by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (see Mendelssohn House Leipzig) and Robert Schumann in the 19th Century, a search for Bach memorabilia and for his birthplace lead to Eisenach and in 1857, a biographer of Johann Sebastian Bach, Karl Hermann Bitter interviewed some living descendants and they were the ones who identified the house at Frauenplan 21, but like many family legacy stories handed down, it was not entirely accurate.
With the acquisition of the Bachhaus by the New Bach Society, the museum was furnished by its first Director, George Bornemann and the Weimar Court Antiquary with 17th Century era furnishings, located from around Eisenach, including some provided by from the Bach family and other donors. A portrait of Bach by Johann Jakob Ihle was given by the Leipzig publisher, Oskar Hase.
In the middle-ages, the Cathedral of Our Lady (Frauenkirche) first mentioned in 1246 was located just above where the Bach House is today and the square where it is located was the Frauenplan (or church place) with the house at the foot of the former steps. The surrounding streets still bear the names “Frauenberg” and “Marienstrasse”. The cathedral first suffered when its towers were removed for the building of the city wall in 1306, and then was destroyed in the Peasant Revolt of 1525, but the ruins remained up until in Bach’s childhood.
The Bach statue now stands in a small flower garden just below where the church entrance would have been. The last stones from the cathedral were removed in 1693 and used to construct the Church of the Holy Cross at the old Cemetery where both of Bach’s parents are buried. The monument statue by Adolf von Donndorf has been in place since before the museum. Commissioned in 1884, it was first placed outside St Georges Church where Bach was Christened, but moved to its present position on the Frauenplan in 1938.
The original Bach House which has been owned by the New Bach Society is actually two separate houses, dating from 1456 and 1458, joined into one building in 1611. In 2007, the new modern extension which the interactive exhibits and audio rooms of the museum are located was designed by Berthold Penkhues, a disciple of Frank Gehry, and the result of winning first prize in a design competition sponsored by the European Union, Federal Germany and the State of Thuringia.
The grounds of the Bach House encompass a small Baroque garden that would have been there at the time, and the house on Rittergasse, where Ambrosias Bach rented rooms when he first came to Eisenach from 1671 to 1674 before he bought his own house stands on the far side of the garden. This half-timbered construction building dates from 1456.
Bach House Museum Exbibits
Today the Bach House in Eisenach has over 250 exhibits of Bach’s life and music, including over 400 musical instruments. In the residential old house, the bedroom, living room, and kitchen with period furnishings illustrate what life was like in Sebastian Bach‘s time. A glass likely owned by the composer, the “Bach Goblet” is on display and and Bachʼs “theological library” has been meticulously reconstructed. Visitors to the museum are treated to a short concert performance held every hour in the “Instrument’s Hall” of the old house played on five original baroque period keyboard instruments, two organs, a clavichord, spinet and harpsichord . The mini concerts last about 20 minutes.
In the new building, other more modern exhibits of multimedia art works and individual listening stations allow a presentation of Bachʼs music. An original Bach manuscript can be experienced, played line by line and a “Walkable Composition” where a full 180 degree screen transforms the music into a full sensory experience. First editions of Bach works such as the “Art of Fugue”are here, origanal music with Bach autograph, and an organ manual on which Bach played for a year. Also most notable are the Bach Bubble Chairs listening pods. Standing just outside the entrance from the new building to the old is the original entrance door to Bach's apartment from the Leipzig St Thomas School where Bach and his family had lived for 27 years (see Bach Museum Leipzig).
Visiting the Bach House Eisenach
The opening hours are daily from 10 am - 6 pm. Führungen sind auch außerhalb der Öffnungszeiten buchbar. Guided tours are also available outside the opening hours. The mini concert in the Instrument Hall is included in admission. Admission is €9 for adults, students and seniors €5, Chiildren under 6 years are free. A family card is available for €20. The Bach House Music Museum is a five minute walk from St Georges Church and the Luther House. © Bargain Travel Europe
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Bachhaus Eisnenach
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See Also:
HANDEL HOUSE BIRTHPLACE MUSIC MUSEUM - HALLE
LEOPOLD MOZART BIRTHHOUSE - AUGSBURG
GRASSI MUSICAL INSTRUMENT MUSEUM - LEIPZIG
BRUSSELS MUSICAL INSTRUMENT MUSEUM
