On Monday, 24.06.2024, the specialist group Historical Instruments visited the German Romantic Museum and the neighboring Goethe House in Frankfurt am Main.
The approach of the museum, which only opened 3 years ago, is to explain various topics through their context - almost a bit like the game "Taboo", where you circle and define a term by illustrating it through associations and its surroundings.

The students were particularly impressed by the fact that so many Romantic personalities were universal scholars. After all, anyone who wanted to make it as a scholar in the Romantic period had to be knowledgeable in several of the closely interwoven areas of expertise, such as music, philosophy, religion, physics, chemistry, painting, architecture, poetry or politics.

It is therefore not surprising that, in addition to his literary skills, J.W. Goethe was also a passionate painter himself, was involved in color theory, botany, biology, mineralogy and politics, among other things, and was director of the Weimar Theatre from 1776-1817. He played the violoncello and worked as a lawyer after studying law. In the Goethe House, where he was born and spent most of his youth, visitors were able to see the interior furnishings of the well-to-do family, most of which have been preserved in their original state.

After an extensive tour with the head of the manuscript department of the Freie Deutsche Hochstift, the students had the opportunity to explore the museum according to their own interests: In one of the musical stations, for example, they approached the "Faust" theme using the manuscript and audio samples of Robert Schumann's "Scenes from Goethe's Faust" or were able to trace the travel routes and spheres of influence of various Romantics on an interactive map. After the Goethe House, the students also visited Frankfurt Cathedral and a central site of German democracy: Frankfurt's Paulskirche.

For the University of Music Würzburg students, it was a successful excursion that broadened their horizons and brought them one step closer to their study goal - the formation of a networked, critical view of their own cultural, civic and political role as artists.